13: Resurrection
by cathrl
Summary: Mark's back behind his desk, Don's in a chemistry lab, Jason's commanding G-Force, Rick's the Phoenix co-pilot. And not one of them is happy about it.
1. Chapter 1

If you're new to my alternate BOTP universe, welcome – but this probably isn't the place to start. The beginning of the main series is Rumours of Death, but you'd probably get away with starting at All Good Things and skipping Return to the Red Planet and Dylan's Tale.

As always, nothing canon in this belongs to me. Comments of all kinds are always very welcome.

Warning for some mild profanity.

With many thanks to my husband and Julie Bloss Kelsey for beta-reading far above and beyond the call of duty.

 **Resurrection**

"I hear you had an exciting week?" Commander Nykinnen leant back in his chair, smiling at Mark across the piles of paper on his desk.

"You could say that." Truth be told, it had been a moderately boring week, concluded by three hours of more excitement than he'd expected to ever see again. Three hours of exhausting excitement, which had left him so stiff from the waist down he could barely move, and had to call in sick for the first three days of the following week until getting into and out of the wheelchair was something he could do without whimpering.

This morning was the first time he'd made it back to rehab, and while he'd felt utterly useless compared to the freedom of movement he'd had in freefall, Tariq had looked impressed, and made noises about walking aids which didn't have wheels. It was as if a tight band had been loosened from around his chest. The chair was a temporary inconvenience again. Paperwork was something which needed to be done now, rather than all his life would ever hold. The nightmare of the past ten months might, finally, be coming to an end.

"I doubt you can see your desk."

If Nykinnen was pushing for a reaction, Mark was determined not to give him anything in return. "Todd's perfectly capable of keeping things running. Anyway, I'd best get started. Anything you want me to start with?"

"Chemist with an odd background. He should be here at ten." There was an edge to Nykinnen's voice, and Mark immediately paid closer attention. "Details are in the email."

 _And you're not comfortable discussing them, for whatever reason_. Mark said, "I'll look at that first," spun his chair round, and headed for his own office.

There was a fair amount of paperwork on his desk, but not unmanageable - and the largest pile had a simple sheet of paper folded in half standing on the top with a neatly printed message in Todd's handwriting: _needs signing_. Mark shifted from wheelchair to office chair, a task made far simpler now that he had control over what his legs were doing, pulled the top ten files or so towards him, and made a start while his computer fired up.

He heard one tap on the door which led to the Team Seven common room, and it opened without waiting for a reply. That meant Todd Sanderson, his assistant, who would have shared this office had there been room for both of them to work in here. As it was, he worked in the common room when he needed a desk and Mark was using it. All hardcopy dealing with courses and qualifications for all members of Team Seven lived in a standard four drawer filing cabinet squeezed behind the door. It had apparently been full three months ago, so quite how Todd continued to file away reams of documentation was unclear - it was a standing joke between the two of them that it was transdimensional. Certainly Todd was the only person who could reliably find any single piece of paper in there in under five minutes. ISO might claim to be heading for a paperless society, but their other standing joke was that the timescales were geological. _Oh, man_ , he thought. _Even my jokes are about paperwork_.

"Morning, sir. I hear you had an exciting week."

Mark forced a smile. He suspected the opening gambit of every single person who knew who he really was would be something very similar for the next few days. "No paperwork, at least. Everything under control?"

"Fine. We have someone new coming in at ten o'clock."

"Nykinnen told me." The screen had lit up with the ISO standard wallpaper and a request for his password, and Mark dutifully typed it in: _g1cripple._ Hopefully one day soon he could change it.

 _You have 492 new messages_ , his system told him, and he died a little inside. He could almost feel its glee as he scrolled back up the list looking for the one he wanted. If he didn't spot it quickly, he'd search on all those from Nykinnen -

 _Re: Donald Wade_ , the subject read, and searching was no longer an issue.

Wade the traitor, proposed as a member of Team Seven. Redemption for the ex G-Force second-in-command turned designer of Spectran mecha weaponry. Or, was it? There were certainly a lot of caveats on what he was to be allowed to do. Forcing back his kneejerk _over my dead body_ reaction, Mark read every word of the email, slowly and carefully, and then smiled ruefully to himself. No, not redemption. Rigid supervision, putting Wade in a situation where they could use his talents while his superior officer was someone who knew exactly who he was, what he had done, and what he was capable of. The email, though, didn't say why the limitations were there. No wonder Nykinnen, with a full black section clearance, had reacted strangely to a set of blatantly incomplete information. Nykinnen would have to know Wade's history if he was to work here, though, now that Mark wouldn't be here forever. And, in the meantime, everything needed to be locked down secure. He wanted no chance of his replacement innocently authorising Wade for something with a higher rating.

"Todd? Remember those visiting trainees we had here? The Rigan ones?"

Todd turned his head without uncurling from his hunched position over the open bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. "Yes?"

"Can you find me a blank one of their contract forms?" That was the closest he could think of to what he was being asked to provide for Wade: apparent rank and privilege, with strictly limited security clearance and firm limits on what courses he was allowed to take. No matter that he'd been officially cleared of all wrongdoing and given a full pardon, Mark was not letting the former Hawk anywhere near a plane. Or a gun range, for that matter.

The bottom drawer slammed shut, the second one down opened, and within twenty seconds Mark found himself presented with the piece of paper in question, by a corporal wearing a particularly smug expression.

"Thank you," he said.

"We're getting more Rigans?" Todd queried.

"No -" and there was a tap on the corridor door.

"Come!" he called, and it opened and a young man walked in. He wasn't remotely tall - shorter than Mark himself, if anything. Almost slight enough to be described as scrawny, a narrow face, grey-green eyes, mousy brown hair long enough to fall in his eyes and probably non-coincidentally hide any scarring at the back of his neck. Someone who would normally have been eminently forgettable. Not for him, though. He hoped the reverse wouldn't be true.

It was the best part of a year since Donald Wade had last seen him, and then it had been the middle of the night and the guy had been an appalling psychological mess following days of solitary and Grant's pet doctor's patent drug cocktails. The time before that, his jaw had been on the wrong end of Mark's fist. Both times Mark had been in birdstyle. Wade now showed as little recognition as anyone ever did. Birdstyle had always been an exceptionally good disguise.

"Sir, I'm Donald Wade. I'm applying to join Team Seven as a forensic chemist." He sounded a little better than he had done in the cells, though that wouldn't have been difficult.

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Jarrald, in charge of the new recruits here." Wade put his hand out, at the expected height, and Mark sighed inwardly. "And I won't be doing any standing up."

Wade's eyes flicked to the wheelchair in the corner and he flushed scarlet before offering his hand directly to Mark. "Sorry, sir."

"No matter. Sit down."

Wade turned to pull the one spare chair up to the desk, and only then did Mark notice Sanderson, standing frozen in jaw-dropping shock. He'd all but forgotten Sanderson's past, which he never talked of, as one of Grant's flotilla of anonymous black section security guards. Obviously that had involved Wade at some point, because there was no question that Todd had recognised him. Not because they knew one another, though. Wade had looked clean past the corporal's uniform and ignored him. Not an officer, so part of the scenery. Mark had used that trick himself on more than one occasion.

The scrape of the chair on the floor seemed to get his attention back. Todd flashed Mark a look which he couldn't even begin to interpret, silently slid the drawer of the filing cabinet shut, and left through the door to the common room, shutting it behind him without a word.

 _And what would I be saying to Wade if I had no idea who he was_? Mark steepled his fingers and considered the young man in front of him. Wade was no longer the arrogant traitor he'd appeared to be, the Spectran weapons developer Mark had first encountered holding a gun on a collapsed Jason and promptly decked. Nor was he the pathetic wreck from the underground cells in black section, when Jason had realised there was more going on and gone to his former second-in-command's aid. Mark knew Wade had been treated in the local ISO psychiatric hospital - and there was still a certain air of fragility about him, even after all these months. Mark couldn't remember, if he'd ever known, precisely what Wade had been treated for, but the empty spaces where most people had a resume were something anyone would have asked about.

"So, tell me what you've been doing recently?" He made deliberate eye contact. "It's not normal for someone to apply for a security team when their official resume has a whole set of footnotes saying they mustn't be given a security clearance."

Wade swallowed hard, and Mark saw a determined effort to drop the shoulders and relax one muscle at a time. "I'm not sure what you've been told, sir. To cut a long story short, I was a Spectran prisoner for a while and I didn't hold up too well. The shrinks feel I shouldn't have access to classified information, because if I was captured again, I'd tell them everything. To be honest, they're probably right."

Mark nodded, keeping his body language neutral. "I see. You've been having psychiatric treatment?"

"I was locked away for a long time. Since my release I've been having trouble with agoraphobia. That's the fear -"

"Of open spaces. Yes, I know. So, why Team Seven?"

"Because I'm told you have a whole bunch of special cases already." Wade sat forward, a desperate intensity in his eyes. "Commander, I'll be honest. I need this. I'm a very, very good chemist - but as a civilian, I can't work on anything that means anything to the war effort. I want to do that. I want to help beat those bastards."

"Without a security clearance?"

"I know there are projects that wouldn't be a risk. Molecular shielding. Increased fuel yields. There are a bunch of things which it wouldn't matter even if I did tell the Spectrans all about them, because their technology is already so much more advanced than ours. Where what's needed is someone who can reverse engineer their tech." He flushed and looked at the floor. "I hate to say it, but I've worked with Spectrans enough that I'm the best person to do it."

"Worked with them in what areas?" Mark asked.

Wade flushed even darker, never looking up. "Chemical weapons and their delivery systems, mostly. I've done some bad things, Commander. I can't put them right, but I need to make all the amends I can."

"I see," Mark said again. "Mr Wade, I've not been given enough information to make a decision. I'm going to have to discuss this with Commander Nykkinen and get back to you. That will be all for now."

Don's face fell, but he stood up as indicated and headed for the door. Paused, and turned, one hand on the frame. "Commander...they won't let me do anything right now. Luminous paint! I know I can be of more use than that." His eyes darted to the wheelchair. "You must know how I feel, sir. Please give me a chance. I won't let you down."

.

Mark rubbed a hand across his eyes as the door closed behind Wade. _You must know how I feel. They won't let me do anything_. Hell yes, he knew exactly how Wade felt, more than the other man could possibly imagine. Still, the part of him screaming empathy for someone else ripped out of G-Force through no fault of his own was warring with the part listing everything the man had done in Spectran captivity. He'd worked for the enemy and innocent people had died as a result. They were gone forever, and Wade had his freedom, treatment, life as a civilian chemist working here at ISO Headquarters. Why risk giving him more?

 _You have all those things too_ , his inner voice said. _Is it enough for you_?

No, it wasn't. And Wade had a point. What was the worst that could happen - that he ran back to Spectra and discussed a form of shielding which was already common technology for the Spectran mecha? He knew Wade had been cleared – 'diminished responsibility' was the technical term for 'broke under torture'. He'd told the truth about his work on weapons systems when he could easily have dissimulated. And the man was a genius. Anderson had said so himself, and that wasn't the sort of praise Anderson gave out lightly. No, they could use him. Just...cautiously.

He flicked off the "do not enter" light which had indicated that there was an interview in progress, and Sanderson's tap and entry happened so shortly afterwards that he must surely have been watching for it.

"Commander...can we talk privately?"

Mark turned the light back on. "Of course. Sit down, Todd."

The older man did so, perching on the edge of the recently vacated chair. "I...you do know who that is?"

"I know exactly who that is. I'm surprised that you do, though. Is there something you want to tell me?"

Sanderson looked anywhere but at him. "Something I need to tell you. Or tell someone. Something I should have admitted a long time ago."

 _What the hell_? Todd Sanderson; thirty-something, married to an ISO administrative assistant, with a small daughter and another baby on the way, was utterly reliable. There was one single blot on his copybook: his resignation from black section security when he'd decided it wasn't for him. Whatever could he have done that was that bad? And what did it have to do with Don Wade, of all people?

Todd was visibly nervous, and Mark pushed a mug across the desk towards him. "Go get yourself a coffee. Me, too. I'm not going anywhere."

The man nodded silently and headed for the common room, and Mark took the opportunity to hit the computerised personnel records. Todd's resignation had happened very close to Don's recapture by G-Force. He didn't remember the dates of anything like all their missions, but the sequence of events from that particular time period was engraved on his mind. Jason had failed to show for one of their missions. The next mission, the following day, had ended with Don's recapture by G-Force, and Jason had barely managed to get through it. Just stress, the doctors had said. He'd be fine. Two weeks later he'd collapsed spectacularly during a mission to Spectra, from what had eventually been determined to be a combination of post-concussion syndrome and migraine. Todd's resignation had been a couple of weeks after that. Mark didn't remember the precise date when a call from Jason had woken him in the middle of the night, calling him down to the black section cells to stand between a furious head of security and the Condor protecting the man who had been his second, but the two had to be close. Very close.

Todd returned a couple of minutes later with a pair of steaming mugs, and Mark accepted his with thanks and sipped cautiously at the hot, black liquid. Ordinary coffee, caffeine and all, the remaining minor functionality of his implant told him. It did taste better than the decaffeinated variety.

"So, what's eating you?" he asked. _Keep it casual. You may need for him not to have told you officially_.

"I was on guard duty in the black section high security cells when Wade was a prisoner down there."

"I guessed as much. And you resigned. Nothing wrong with that. Nobody has to work in black section if they don't want to be there."

"No. The thing is, what I did right before I resigned was far from authorised. I thought it had been lost - but Wade's out, so people must know. It'll catch up with me eventually. I want you to hear it from me first."

 _Well, that's melodramatic_. "I'm considering this to be off the record," Mark said between sips of the coffee. "But I appreciate knowing."

Todd took a swig - the man must have an asbestos mouth - and put the mug down carefully on a cork mat on the desk. "While I was guarding him, Wade was manipulated into writing a confession. One of my tasks was to copy it for Major Grant while Wade slept." He drew a ragged breath. "I read it. And I took a second copy, and put it under the Condor's door at the end of my shift. Then I went home and wrote my resignation letter."

 _Oh_! And suddenly a set of pieces which had never made any sense clicked into place in Mark's mind. He'd always wondered how on earth Jason had managed to get hold of one of Grant's security documents just hours after being released from Medical, probably before he should have been, and looking as if he might keel over at any moment. Answer: he hadn't, he'd been given a copy which had never gone anywhere near Grant.

"Do you want to tell me why?"

"They were going to lock him away to rot. And he'd been tortured, Mark. He'd cracked under torture, and he hated himself for it. They weren't even going to give him a trial. Just leave him drugged and in solitary. I know there's a war on, but I couldn't be part of that. I knew he could be manipulating me...so I thought I'd get a second opinion from someone who'd known him, and then get out of there before I got myself locked up for treason. I never heard anything. I presumed I'd been had, the copy was in the bottom of an ISO shredder somewhere, and Wade was still down in the cells."

Mark smiled ruefully. "You should have said. I could have told you the truth months ago - he was out of there within twelve hours of the Condor reading it. I read it, too."

"And?" There was hope in the man's eyes, belief that maybe, after all, he'd not only done the right thing, but that it wasn't going to come back to haunt him.

"And, strictly off the record, Grant was way out of line and the doctor involved in the drug regime was reassigned somewhere a lot less pleasant. And, as for now, Wade gets his second chance. Strictly monitored and supervised. I need you to produce a contract with no security clearance, and he's going nowhere near the weapons courses, but to the rest of Team Seven he can be just another junior lieutenant."

"And I -?"

"I'm sorry, Corporal. I'm still tired from last week. I think I must have dozed off. I seem to have not heard what you have been telling me for the last few minutes."

Todd's face cracked into a smile of pure relief. "Oh dear, Commander. Let me get you some more coffee."

Mark took the last swallow from his mug. 'I want to help beat those bastards,' Wade had said. He did, too. It was going to be a very long road back...but it had to start somewhere. Here, and now, and with something very small.

"Thanks, Todd. Make it decaf."

* * *

"Agent Nineteen, was it?" Anderson tried to pull his shattered thoughts together, having been roused from a sound sleep by a more than flustered duty officer.

"Yes, sir. He said he wouldn't speak to anyone except Major Grant, but when I explained, he said he'd speak to you."

"I understand. Thank you, Hamilton. And fetch me some coffee, would you?"

Anderson sat down heavily in the senior controller's chair in the deserted control room, rubbing at his eyes before toggling the switch which would pick up the incoming transmission.

"Anderson."

"I understand there's a problem with my usual contact." The accent was American, but not quite right. Assumed, on top of something else.

"He's unavailable, and will be for the conceivable future." Grant had never been sick before for as long as Anderson had known him. Now, though, he'd done it properly - acute labyrinthitis to the degree that Chris Johnson had been forced to drug him into insensibility while the inflammation subsided. That had been nine, nearly ten days ago now, and he still wasn't fit to talk.

"In that case I need to report to you. The situation on ComSat Three may be worse than we thought."

Anderson woke up in a hurry. "What situation on ComSat Three?"

The image on the small screen in the arm of his chair was fuzzy, grainy, and only used a couple of shades of grey, but even so he could see the man blanch. "You sent a training party up there last week. Who went?"

"Your contact didn't, if that's what you meant."

The eyes widened. "You need to gain override access to my contact's files, immediately. I believed something was in hand, and...it may not be. Unless his replacement was briefed beforehand?"

"By him, you mean? No, it wasn't possible."

"We need to do this face to face. I'll be with you tomorrow." And the screen fizzed to grey static.

Anderson sat and stared at the wall of blank screens in front of him, considering. ComSat Three. Grant had been insistent that he should be the one to take the trainees up there, but hadn't mentioned any particular reason why. Nor had he needed one - he was their primary trainer, a former astronaut with vast amounts of zero g experience, it made perfect sense. If there had been something more going on, he'd never given any hint of it. Then he'd been found collapsed in his quarters on the morning he was due to go, semiconscious and incoherent. Certainly his concerns hadn't been passed onto Mark, who had replaced him. And, while there had been a Spectran attack on ComSat Three, any operative with access to a standard news channel would know about it. Which meant that wasn't what he was talking about. Which meant that something more was going on. Now, today, with Force Two still not active, and with G-Force growing more stressed and less efficient with each passing day.

"Crap," said Anderson with feeling, picked up the phone, and dialled. "Ivanov? Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I need you in the control room. We have to get into Grant's files."


	2. Chapter 2

"...and tonight it's going to rain, apparently. Nice greasy track."

Jason groaned. "You're kidding."

"I only wish." Sam, his mechanic, pushed blonde hair out of her eyes with an oily hand, leaving an unfortunate mark on her forehead. "Just enough drizzle to make it slippery, not enough to wash the dust away properly."

"It's the same for everyone." Dave O'Leary, ISO Racing's newest driver, stuck an equally dirty face out from under the car. "Makes fine-tuning the braking system a bit of a moot point, though."

"No short-cuts. They've been wrong about the weather before." Jason eyed his number two car critically. "Not the brakes I'm worried about, though. Tyres."

"Time for that tomorrow morning -" Sam looked over his shoulder. "Hi, Ed. Something I can do for you?"

There was the sound of nervous throat-clearing from behind him, and at that Jason did look round. Ed, the chief mechanic and pit boss of the racing team, was _never_ nervous. Never indecisive. And that meant trouble.

"Jason, I need for you to come with me right now."

He frowned. "Sure. I'll just -"

"Right now. Don't pick up or put down anything. Sam, what has he been working on?"

"Brakes?" There was confusion in her tone.

"Inside the car?"

"Yes, I've been under it since lunchtime. What's going on?" Dave had extracted himself from under the car and now stood up, shoulder to shoulder with Jason. As moral support went, it wasn't much...but it was there.

Ed turned and gestured at the doorway and another man entered. This one Jason didn't recognise, but everything about him made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not in a dangerous, oh-look-a-Spectran-infiltrator way, but what he got from the man was a definite impression of mistrust and accusation.

"Don't worry about that. This is Mr Gordon. You two are to cooperate with him fully - he'll be stripping the interior of the car."

"But there's a race tomorrow!" Sam's voice was outraged.

And Jason felt just the same. Slow fury had started to heat at the peremptory way they were being treated, and at the mention of stripping the car - _his_ car - it boiled over.

"Now just a goddamn minute! What the hell is going on here?"

Ed looked everywhere but at him. "You won't want to do this in public, Jason."

"I've got nothing to hide. If you have an accusation to make, you make it now. No whispers and rumours." Nothing to hide - that was the understatement of the year, but he badly needed to be seen that way. Dave O'Leary was Team Seven. It was important that he of all people didn't start querying exactly why he saw Jason quite as little as he did, given that they now had two common areas of work rather than only one.

"Are you sure?" Ed was the one who didn't want to do this, Jason realised. Didn't want to say whatever it was at all, let alone in public.

Too bad. What the hell could it be, anyway, that would have them searching the car? It was standard, for heaven's sake. It wasn't like he raced in the G-2. Tempting thought though that was. He simply folded his arms and glared.

"Mr Gordon is a drugs investigator. Traces of a banned substance have been found in your last drug test. He'll be checking the car for traces of residue."

Jason burst out laughing. "Don't be ridiculous."

"I wish I was joking, Jason. Now, if you'll come with me right away, please, we have some questions to ask and the team doctor will need to take a blood sample."

He rolled his eyes and turned his glare from his apologetic boss to the weasel in the suit now taking pictures of the car. "Go right ahead. I'm telling you, though - Gordon, is it? You leave that car fit to be raced in tomorrow or you will regret it."

"Jason..." Dave began.

"Drugs? Me?" He snorted derisively.

"Dave, he won't even drink coffee or take aspirin," Sam put in, her eyes wide and brimming.

"Dead right I don't. Whoever screwed up at the drug test place is going to regret this."

.

Ed led him to the meeting room, opened the door, and silently ushered him in. Jason had been here before, of course. Usually for reprimands. _Where were you yesterday?_ and _Don't you think this is important?_ and _You're not indispensable, you know!_ He'd always gritted his teeth and played humble and apologetic, and Anderson had arranged excuses on his behalf more than once. He wasn't indispensable at ISO Racing. He was on G-Force, and his work there was a whole lot more important. He just wasn't allowed to say it.

Even so, despite all the dressings-down he'd received, he'd never seen a set of grim expressions like this. The team doctor was here, as was the top boss of ISO Racing - suited and looking decidedly annoyed at being here at all. He didn't recognise another man in a tailored suit, and the last person present was the manager of the track. All of them were seated on the far side of the long metal table, interrogation style.

So, what line to take? Confused? Apologetic? Furious? No, he needed to stay completely in character here. His ISO Racing character, not the Condor.

"I'm Jason Alouita. It sounds like someone's screwed up my test results?"

"I wish I could believe that." The team boss handed him a paper, and waved him to a seat. "What do you know about how drug metabolism works?"

 _Probably more than you ever will_. Jason shrugged. "Just what I've read. It's never seemed relevant. Since I don't take drugs."

"Did you know there was a new testing system in place this year?"

"See above answer. Didn't concern me." Jason kept his tone relatively civil with an effort, and took a quick look at the paper he'd been handed. New testing schedule...sure. Pretty much the same list of banned substances that it had been for the last couple of years, with a couple of the latest party drugs added at the bottom. And then there was a brief rundown on some new testing methods, and something froze inside him.

Not testing for byproducts of the drugs themselves any more. Instead, they were looking for traces left by the body's reaction to certain drugs. Evidence of unnaturally fast reactions, for instance. Of something having stimulated the muscles into working beyond capacity, or of implausibly high levels of stamina.

Just like that, his racing career was over.

He shook his head, standing up and putting the leaflet back on the table. "You won't need blood tests. You caught me. Consider me retired."

"We'll need to ask -"

"Forget it. These drugs aren't illegal, right? So you can't quiz me on them. I'm done here. Ed, my jacket's in bay three, I need to fetch it. You won't be wanting to leave me in here alone. Oh, and tell your man he's wasting his time. There are no drugs in the car and never have been. I guess you'll be wanting these." His voice sounded, to his ears, exactly as it always did. Mark wasn't the only one who could act.

Thankfully his paperwork was in his back pocket and not in his jacket. Jason laid out his racing license and ISO Racing ID very deliberately on the table, helpfully turned them so that his name was visible on both. Forced himself not to swallow, despite the lump in his throat. Then he turned and stalked out, not watching to see if the other man followed him, as close to breaking down as he'd been in a very long time. The last time he'd been this blindsided had been when they'd been told Don was alive. He'd no idea when the time before that had been.

Of all the stupid reasons for it to be over...and the desperately frustrating thing was that he could clear his name absolutely with three words. "I'm the Condor." And that would be incontrovertible evidence that he really did never take drugs. The fact that he could still stand after interplanetary jump proved that his system was clean; that the evidence against him came from his body's reaction to the implant in his neck - and, if they wanted to know whether he used that to gain an unfair advantage, he could prove his innocence in that too, from the chip's stored memory.

So very tempting. And not an option.

.

"Jason, is there anything I can do?" Ed asked him as he followed him down the corridor. Solid, dependable Ed, always there for everyone once you got past the bluster and the inclination to eye everything in a skirt. It had been Ed who taught him the basics of track driving. Ed who had pointed him at a small, battered trailer just barely within the budget of a sixteen year old orphan, and, he suspected, persuaded the park management that he wasn't some young hooligan who would party all night and make everyone else's life hell. And now he had to let the man believe that all this time he'd been a liar and a cheat.

"Nothing. I've been caught. Sorry I let you down."

"You don't sound sorry."

 _That would be because I'm trying not to howl_. Jason just snorted, heading for bay three. Not that there was much in the jacket - but more cash than someone in his situation should casually throw away, and also he didn't want to leave the jacket itself for them. He always wore it here, and if they thought to test it, finding no drug residue on it whatsoever might make someone think. He needed for them not to think. That was going to involve them assuming he was guilty beyond all hope of redemption. He hated it - these people had been his friends and colleagues for longer than he'd known Mark. And he trusted them to the same level. It made no difference. They couldn't know who he really was, and that meant they had to believe he was a drug cheat.

In bay three, Sam and Dave stood idle, backs to the wall, watching intently whatever Gordon was doing inside the car. Jason didn't dare make eye contact, just heading for where his jacket lay hung on the back of a chair over by the shelf of manuals.

"That was quick!" Sam said hopefully. "Sorted?"

"Not exactly," Ed growled.

"Not at all." Jason turned to face them, utterly determined not to let anything show on his face. "It's true, I've been taking drugs. They caught me. I'm gone. Good luck tomorrow, Dave."

In the stunned silence that followed, he was out of the door before he heard Dave's, "Well, who'd have thought it?" and Sam's replying, "I don't believe it! I won't!" in a frantic, close-to-tears tone which made him want to run back and blurt out everything. That wasn't an option either. He just kept walking.

* * *

She didn't believe it. Genuinely didn't. Sam had trusted Jason for years. There weren't many people she trusted implicitly, and this was not him, she was absolutely sure of it. If Jason had been taking drugs, then everything she thought she knew about anyone was useless.

"I wonder what he was taking?" Dave mused. "Heck, I wonder how he's got away with it this long. We -"

"You don't _believe_ it?" Sam heard her own voice crack to a squeak, but could do nothing about it.

Dave shrugged. "If anyone else had said it, no, I wouldn't. You heard the man."

"It's not true! He's been blackmailed...or something..."

"Jason? Roll over like that for something he hadn't done?" Dave strolled over to the car, and laid a proprietorial hand on the roof. "No way. Never. So...he took drugs. Which I guess makes me lead driver for this baby."

Sam stared at him, and abruptly she couldn't do it. Couldn't be there, for an afternoon of recriminations and negative anecdotes and 'I thought there was something wrong all along'. She wasn't needed to work on the car; the investigator was apparently determined to strip the interior down to the bare metal, right down to removing the rubber pads from the pedals. Dave was perfectly capable of supervising him. ISO Racing's newest driver might be laid back and more than a little sloppy if he didn't think it mattered, but when it came down to the car he'd be driving tomorrow evening, he'd be plenty watchful enough.

"Bathroom," she said casually to him, rescued her jacket from the chair where it had been under Jason's (there were some advantages in being female; nobody would question her taking it) and headed out. Not to the bathroom, but to the front exit. She didn't sign out. She'd get stick for that, and right now she didn't care.

.

She'd thought the five minute walk back to her trailer might clear her head and help things make sense, but if anything it did the opposite. What was she _doing_? Showing solidarity with a drug cheat? Any implication that she was somehow involved, and her own career could be in jeopardy. The links were there, too, for an investigator with a good imagination. She was pretty sure that most of the tablets her bodybuilding-obsessed stepfather had taken for the entire time she'd known him weren't exactly legally purchased. She didn't know what they were - nothing criminal, but definitely steroids of some sort. Not that steroids would have been any use whatsoever to a race driver, but it was a link to someone who knew where drugs of dubious legality, at least in the sporting sense, could be obtained. Rather too close a link for comfort.

Jason's trailer was silent and shut up over at the far side of the gravelled area as Sam unlocked the door to her own. It felt wrong being in here this early in the day. Normally she returned just in time to cook dinner and sit in front of the TV for the evening, contentedly tired, except for the odd occasion when she went out with her old school friends. They were becoming fewer and further between, though. There just wasn't much she had in common with them any more. She had far more in common with Jason.

Or thought that she had. She released the roller blind covering the tiny window over the kitchen unit, and stared across the gravelled area to the other trailer. Silent, shut up, every curtain closed tight...and the nose of a dark blue Nissan Skyline just visible behind the right hand end, parked between trailer and the ten foot dark evergreen hedge which almost completely surrounded their particular little patch of trailer park.

The car was there. For as long as she'd known Jason, that had meant he was either in the trailer or round at the track. And he simply couldn't be at the track, not after this.

Note-writing wasn't her forte. Never had been, never would be. She sat at her table, notebook open in front of her, for several minutes, before she managed a single word. And then it all came out in a rush. Doubtless badly spelt, hopefully comprehensible.

 _Jason, no matter what, I don't believe it. I'm here if you want to talk. And I'll stand up for you._

She looked at it, considering. Nothing else was worth saying. And he'd know where to find her, if he cared.

The note fitted very neatly through the place where the door of Jason's aged trailer no longer fitted the frame as well as it should. She knew that knocking on the door would be a waste of time. That done, she retreated to her own trailer. She'd done everything she possibly could.

* * *

 _I'll stand up for you_.

Jason read the note three times, hoping to find some other meaning in it. There wasn't one. Sam, utterly loyal and trusting, would simply refuse to accept that he was guilty. Would point out, repeatedly and insistently, just how out of character it was for him, with years' worth of specific examples. And, sooner or later, someone would listen to her and look more closely at his history. And that would spell disaster.

He knew what he should do. Go over there and tear her trust to shreds. Destroy her belief in him beyond redemption. He could do it, too. Easily. There were races he'd pulled out of without explanation, plenty of them over the years. Some because of scrambles, some because of his promise to himself. He'd use the implant enhancements to prevent accidents - but if he did so, he'd not finish the race. It would be easy enough to present them as times when he'd known he'd fail the drugs test.

He couldn't do it. Not just because every fibre of his being protested that it was bitterly unfair that he could have nobody who believed he was innocent, but because of the quiet weeping he could hear on the very edge of implant-enhanced hearing. She was already devastated. He couldn't do it to her. Even more than that, he couldn't do it to _them_. To a friendship which, one day, he'd hoped might go to another level. Some day, when the war was over, when he dared have a relationship which lasted more than one night, with someone who he actually cared about, someone who could be told the truth.

That left him with few choices. None, officially. One, if he decided to break all the rules and trust someone without a security clearance to her name. He'd never done it. Not even once, not by choice. He knew Mark had, and he was pretty sure parts of Tiny's family knew more than they should. And Jill hadn't had a formal security clearance, though she'd figured it out on her own, and besides she was known and trusted already, even if she didn't know it. Sam did work for ISO - it wasn't like she was a stranger. But it was still a huge risk to take. He'd be not just trusting Sam with his own life, but effectively trusting her with the future of Earth.

Regardless, he had to do something. He couldn't leave her to go back to the track, refusing to believe his guilt, and vocal about it. She could reveal his identity without ever realising what it was herself.

.

Sam opened the door of her trailer to his knock, eyes swollen and lines of mascara trickling down her left cheek. The right one was one big black smudge where she'd rubbed at it. She looked very young and completely lost, and Jason knew what he had to do.

"Sam, I'm sorry to let you down. But, dammit, kid, you're gullible! What, you thought I was some kind of saint?"

Sam reached past him and pulled the door shut. "No."

"No what? Perfect Jason, never corrupts his body with anything? It never occurred to you what a damn good cover it would be?"

A fresh stream of tears flowed. "No. Didn't buy it then, won't buy it now. Jason, I don't know why you have to leave all of a sudden like this. I guess it's ISO Security, am I right? You've been reassigned somewhere and you need an excuse to walk out of the racing team no questions asked? Well, I won't let it go down like this. If you have to go, you have to go. But I won't let everyone say you deserved to be kicked out. Why should I? What the hell difference will it make? Other people get to just leave when they're reassigned. Allen did."

Jason sighed. Out of options, and the only thing left was the truth.

"Sit down, Sam."

"If you're going to lie to me some more, I'd rather you just left. Nothing you say can make me believe you should have failed that drug test." She paused, frowning at him, her eyes brimming again. "What, you think that's funny?"

 _I'm hoping in ten seconds you'll think it's funny too_. Jason took a last confirming glance round the trailer. All curtains shut, bright sunlight outside, and no voices or footsteps to the limit of his hearing, even when he leaned hard on the implant. Insofar as doing what he was about to could ever be secure...it was.

He locked eyes with Sam in a way he hoped would be reassuring, brought his left arm up and over, and said, "Transmute!"

The usual coloured flare of light, far too brilliant to see past, the usual sensation of what he was wearing shifting into birdstyle - and an entirely unusual shriek. That, he'd not taken into consideration. He hoped nobody was close enough to hear it.

He opened his eyes again to see Sam, sitting rigid behind the table, eyes wide in an expression of shocked disbelief and her hands over her mouth. Silent, now, and staring. And, after years of imagining what he'd do when he finally got to reveal who he really was, he couldn't think of a single thing to say. Nor, apparently, could she. So he did the only thing he could think of: sat down opposite her on the narrow trailer bench, removed his helmet and placed it on the table between them, and put out his hand, still gloved.

Sam looked down at the hand, back to his face, down again - and then put her hand on his, and cleared her throat shakily. "How long have you..."

"Always. I'm sorry."

"What for?" She cracked a feeble smile. "Am I the last person in the universe to know or something?"

"Hardly." He considered her, sitting back and apparently trying to act normal. "I thought you'd have a million questions."

"Probably, once you've gone. For now..." She bit her lip. "So you did take drugs? But because you had to?"

"Nope. I can't. Any drugs in my system, anything at all, and I'd keel over every time we made an interplanetary jump. I'm not this anal about avoiding caffeine because I think it's cool or something."

Sam wiped her eyes. "This is unreal. You sitting here, dressed as...like that, talking about interplanetary jump? But then how come...?"

"They've changed the testing method. I guess what they've picked up is something bizarre in my system. Residuals from using the implant. And before you ask, no, I don't use it when I race. Not unless I have to, to avoid a smash - and then I pull out."

She nodded, the expression relaxing somewhat, wiped her eyes again - and looked at the back of her hand. "Man, I must look a state."

Jason smiled ruefully. "You've looked better."

At that, Sam really did look alarmed, bolting from her seat and disappearing into the bathroom. There were sounds of female horror, presumably as soon as she looked in a mirror, and a minute later she emerged, makeup-free and considerably less tear-stained. She stood uncertainly in the narrow space between bathroom door and kitchen unit.

"I do have a question. If you didn't take drugs...why say you did?"

"Because I can't tell anyone the truth." Jason rubbed his eyes with a gloved hand, then removed the glove and pinched the bridge of his nose properly, trying to stave off the headache he knew was coming.

"But you told me...oh." She suddenly looked terrified. "Are you going to get into trouble for this? Am I?"

Jason snorted. "I'll get an official reprimand. You? Go round telling people, sooner or later you'll get attention you don't want. If I thought you'd do that, I'd never have told you." He was quite sure she wouldn't. She'd had a year or more to brag about her part in bringing down a Spectran operation; her rescue by G-Force. She'd discussed it with him, once. He'd never heard it mentioned by anyone else.

"So what do I say? 'Actually, I changed my mind, I think Jason's druggy as hell'?"

He sighed. "I don't have a solution to that yet. Do me a favour, though?"

Sam spluttered. "Jason, you're the commander of G-Force…and I can't believe I'm saying that. A favour? You save the world every other week and I fix racecars. If there's something useful I can do, name it."

"Be too upset to go back into work for a couple of days? I'll figure something I can say and let you know."

"Something that will let you carry on driving?"

"I don't know." And his bracelet lit up in a call sequence he couldn't refuse. He locked eyes with her again, raising it to his mouth. Time to demonstrate that this was for real.

"G-1, go."

It was Tiny's voice, clear but tinny. "Urgent meeting in thirty. Can you come in?"

"I'll be there." He cut the channel and grimaced. "I have to go."

He could see the realisation dawning - he always said that. "All those times..."

"Yeah. This is kinda bright."

Sam nodded, turning away and covering her eyes, and he detransmuted.

* * *

He was half-way to ISO when he realised it wasn't going to work. He'd broken his cover and all for nothing - because Dave O'Leary had been there too, and would expect to see serious censure for him in his other ISO role. Team Seven wouldn't tolerate someone taking performance-enhancing drugs any more than ISO Racing. Jason swore out loud in an assortment of languages, made a rude sign to someone pulling out in front of him with what was, really, plenty of space...and still didn't feel any better.

His head ached, too; the slow pulsing throb behind his right eye which had become a familiar prelude to a cracking evening migraine over the past couple of months. Four, five times a week it was happening now, and he'd had enough of it. Badly needed, he suspected, to go take the drugs for a few days and get his system back into balance instead of lurching from one migraine to the next and depending completely on the electrode net. He'd thought a day working at ISO Racing would help. Relaxing and non-stressful.

 _Yeah, right_. _Man, I need a vacation_. _And I have no chance, none at all, of getting one for the foreseeable future._

 _How long can I keep on doing this?_

 _Because it sure as hell isn't indefinitely._


	3. Chapter 3

"We're in briefing room one," Princess told Jason over the bracelet as he rode the elevator up to black section. "Waiting for you. Birdstyle required."

"Anderson knew exactly where I was and how long I'd take to get here." He knew it came out harsh. He knew, too, that she hadn't meant it like that. The point stood. Anderson knew, pretty much to the minute, how long it took him to get here from his trailer. It wouldn't have cost him anything to tell everyone else to turn up to the meeting five minutes later.

Both Anderson and Ivanov were in the meeting, which was unusual. Also present was a man he didn't recognise. That was equally unusual, but expected the moment Princess had told him to show up in birdstyle; it invariably meant that someone would be there who didn't need to know their real identities.

"Chief, Colonel," he acknowledged as he headed to his seat at Anderson's right hand.

"Commander," Anderson responded, without a hint of sarcasm or dig at his lateness, and Jason mentally re-evaluated. Maybe it was just that urgent. "This is Agent Nineteen, who normally works under Major Grant. You need to hear what he has to say."

"Agent," Jason said, leaning back. "What have I missed?"

"Agent Nineteen has been involved in an undercover operation investigating Spectran operations which concern our satellites. He's fairly sure something big is going down."

Jason frowned. "Chief, something big did go down. They tried to take Comsat Three and we splatted them."

"This would be what you missed, G-1 - if you'd just listen, please? It seems likely that the Comsat Three attack was a feint."

"But they -" Jason caught himself and stopped.

"We know that there were two attacks planned." Agent Nineteen spoke for the first time. He sounded - and looked - entirely unassuming, but Jason knew that these men were anything but. Behind the round, almost chubby face would be a sharp mind. And he of all people didn't judge people by how impressive their voices were. This man's voice was nearly as high and light as his own. "Both a feint and a real one, so that any intercepted communications or plans would be assumed to be associated with the feint."

"Maybe they abandoned the feint," Rick said.

The agent looked sideways at him. "G-5, the feint was to use expendable human personnel. The real one will use Spectrans."

"We did wonder what the point of the Comsat Three attack was," Princess said. "Rio seemed... it's a big city, but it's hardly a strategically important target. And that dish...am I the only one who thought it looked a bit, well, showy? Flamboyant? Not that practical?"

Keyop snorted. "Just like all other Spectran super-weapons."

"Maybe. Did the technical guys figure out what it was supposed to do yet?"

Anderson shook his head, his jaw set, and the agent continued.

"Grant suspected there was something going on up on Comsat Three, possibly infiltration at a high level. He wanted to investigate it himself, and taking your trainees up was an entirely plausible cover. I understand a Commander Jarrald took his place – is he available? Is there any chance he and Grant would have discussed it previously? Should he be here?"

"None," Jason said. "And no." The very last thing Mark needed to hear right now was that the Blackbirds he'd led the trainees against hadn't been real Blackbirds at all, and had been intended to lose. He wondered how that had been supposed to happen. Had Mark and the trainees not been there, Comsat Three would have fallen without a fight.

Tiny suddenly spluttered, sitting up straight. "So...Grant was looking for an infiltrator. We caught the guy who'd been on the inside - but that was easy, too. Why'd he stand up and say it was him, instead of staying undercover?"

"Because then we'd stop looking," said Princess. "And we did. We counted heads and we walked away."

"Grant suspected that there was more than one level of infiltration on Comsat Three," the agent said. "The operative who you picked up may not even have been aware of the others, and was almost certainly junior to them if he knew only about the feint."

"But now we know," said Tiny. "So we go up there and shut the whole thing down."

"That would cripple our early warning system." Anderson's tone was resigned and regretful. "In fact, it's entirely possible that scaring us into doing so is their aim. It's unlikely they know all our jump-communications are filtered through Comsat Three as well, but we can't afford to disrupt operations up there because intel says they're going to do the same type of attack twice. They've managed to plant false information before."

Tiny looked rather taken aback. Princess looked horrified.

"So," said Jason, having been quietly digesting the information, "what you're saying is that we either shut down our jump-comms and the early warning system, or we leave ourselves open to another Comsat Three type attack, oh and this time it might be run by people who know what they're doing?"

"You mean the Blackbirds up there didn't know what they were doing?" That was Rick.

Keyop chuckled. "Even the Raven took one down. Dead easy. Two at once, no problem for us. Not real goons, even. We said so, didn't we, Tiny?"

"Yup," their pilot agreed. "Christmas come early, it was. Fastest cleanup ever. Too good to be true, we said. Now we know it was."

Rick said no more, just folded his arms and sat back in his chair, and Jason felt a twinge of guilt. He'd noticed at the time, too. Had even considered calling the Kite to come get some hand-to-hand experience, and then had decided against it. It could have been a ruse or a trap, after all. He'd left Rick minding the Phoenix, as usual. Now he wished he'd brought him out and given him a piece of the action. Rick could certainly use the experience.

"When will Major Grant be back on his feet, or at least able to talk?" Princess asked. "This is bad. He should have had someone else who knew what was going on."

"He's still not well," Anderson said. "We've accessed his records. We're getting on top of it now - but you needed to know that there's a problem. That will be all for now, thank you, team. Dismissed."

"Commander, can I speak to you?" Rick asked as they left the room.

Jason sighed before he could stop himself. Right now what he needed was to get his thoughts in order, not to deal with a grumbling Kite. Sure, Rick needed combat experience. Rick knew that. He knew that. It seemed now like Comsat Three would have been the ideal opportunity. But making it happen at the time, without the benefit of hindsight...that was more of an issue. He needed to figure out how to make it happen, safely, without getting Rick killed. He didn't need Rick grumbling at him about it; not now, not ever.

"Later," he said bluntly.

"I'd really like to -"

"I said _later_ , G-5." Jason let his exasperation show.

And Rick nodded and walked away, head down.

.

Half an hour later, Jason was sitting at the desk in his quarters at ISO, pile of paperwork in front of him. All of it was overdue mission reports, some of it considerably overdue. He was just working himself up to starting on it when there was a rustling sound from his door, followed by footsteps walking rapidly away. He turned to see a folded sheet of paper pushed under his door. He knew it couldn't be good - such things never were, since people with good news generally knocked in order to give it in person.

But he hadn't anticipated a resignation letter.

At that point, pride went out of the window. He was failing dismally here. He needed help, and he needed it now, and there really was only one person he could talk to about it. One other person who had been where he was now, who knew what it felt like to command G-Force. And who had, not so very long ago, told him to come talk if he wanted to. He'd do that now. He had very little choice.

* * *

Jason's plan to go discuss matters with Mark hit an unexpected snag at the first hurdle.

"He's not in this afternoon, sir," the NCO who assisted Mark at Team Seven told him.

"Are you expecting him?"

"No... I can call him in his quarters if you like?"

"Don't bother." Jason was turning away, cursing inwardly but still with just enough pride not to have it known that he was frantically searching for his friend all over the base, when he had second thoughts. "Remind me again where his quarters are?"

"Heron One, sir."

"Thank you." Jason was out and half way down the corridor before two things struck him. One: that Corporal Sanderson shouldn't have given out a senior officer's private accommodation address that casually - and two: that he'd been remarkably deferential to a junior lieutenant the best part of a decade younger than him. Someone else who knew who both he and Mark were, then.

He didn't know exactly where Heron was, but he did remember that the entire crop of new accommodation blocks built a few months back had been given bird names. He assumed it was one of them, and his guess proved to be correct. Once he was close enough that he needed to pick a specific building, there were signs. Heron was the furthest from the main building, and therefore the closest to the sea. Not a bad location, though it was a ghastly modern concrete construction. It had been a long time since ISO had worried about the aesthetics of any of its buildings.

How long had Mark lived here? Months now - and he'd never once come to visit. Jason felt a pang of guilt as he considered that. Had any of them come here? Not that he remembered them saying. After Mark's determination to get away from all things black section, he didn't think any of them had felt able to push their way into his new life. Jason had talked to him in his Team Seven office fairly regularly, had tried to make it obvious that he was welcome to come back to black section any time he wanted, no reason required. He didn't think Mark had been in the ready room since, regardless. He'd split their lives apart very efficiently and quite deliberately, and the rest of them had respected his choice.

And now Jason was standing outside the front door, delaying - because he simply had no idea whether he was going to be facing a Mark furious at having his privacy invaded, or one who had been desperate for someone else to make the first move.

 _Mark made the first move_ , he reminded himself. _He told you to come talk, if you ever wanted to. Well, you don't want to now - but you sure as hell need to. So quit stalling and get on with it_.

Apartment one was on the ground floor, at the far end of the corridor from the front door of the building, and was immediately identifiable even without the brass numberplate because of the extra low door handle. Even now, Jason hesitated. What if Mark told him to get lost?

 _He won't_ , his subconscious insisted, and with that he forced himself to ring the bell.

There was a long pause. Long enough that he was just starting to think that maybe Mark wasn't here after all. And then the door opened, and he was eye-to-eye with his former commander.

"Jason? What are you doing here?"

He just stared. Of all the things he might have expected to see, Mark on his feet was possibly the last one.

"Jason?"

He found his voice from somewhere. "Visiting you. Isn't that what you suggested?"

That was absolutely all he was prepared to say in public, but Mark knew what he meant, and pulled the door wider. "Come in."

He was in, and standing in the centre of the room, before it sank in that Mark was still over by the door. And that, while unquestionably on his feet, he was leaning heavily on the sort of metal frame more normally used by the extremely elderly. He'd progressed maybe two feet back from the door at a slow shuffle, and the effort was written all over his face. And then he looked up and saw Jason watching him, and flushed scarlet.

"Sorry. I'm still slow."

"Slow?" Jason stared again. "Mark, you're _standing up_. Consider me gobsmacked. Though, wouldn't you do better with crutches?"

Mark grimaced. "Yeah, one hell of a lot better. All upper body, just swing my legs through. But what I need is to learn to walk again. So I get to play geriatric grandad." He'd made it the extra six feet back to the closest chair as he spoke, and now lowered himself into it - somewhat gingerly, Jason thought.

"Hard work?"

"Piece of cake. So, you wanted to talk?"

And the moment of hope, and optimism, and good news, was gone. Jason passed over the folded sheet of paper he'd found under his door, sat down in the other chair, and waited.

Twenty seconds, and Mark's eyes lifted to meet his. "How much of that is true?"

"All of it."

A frown. "And how exaggerated?"

"Not at all." Jason felt his shoulders drooping, his image of competence fading...and he didn't care. "Rick's telling the absolute truth. I have been using him as a glorified autopilot. I haven't let him anywhere near hand-to-hand. I've only let him fly the G-1 when I've been certain he'd not encounter the enemy. As a result, he's alive instead of dead and he hates me. And then you used the Force Two trainees against the ComSat Three assault. I had him stay safe on the Phoenix. I think that was the last straw."

"You never let him out."

"Never. It was always safer not to."

"But long term -"

"Mark, I don't _do_ long term. I barely do tomorrow. You were always the strategist." Jason looked down, biting his lip. "I'm a disaster as commander of G-Force. I just blew my civilian cover, my Team Seven persona's gone the same way. I can't do this any more. I'm only still here because the next in line for this godawful job is Princess and she'd be even worse at it than I am." There. It was said, and his energy was gone.

And Mark was looking at him, shaking his head. "You look like crap. What's up with your civilian cover? No, forget I asked. You working up to a migraine right now?"

Jason nodded miserably, wondering if it was that obvious to everyone these days.

"Then let me talk to Rick. See if -"

"It won't help. Like I said, he's dead right. He's better off out of it, and we'll all be a damn sight happier without him." Jason looked desperately at his old friend, unable to say any more. _My life is in shreds and I need your help to fix it_.

"But it sounds like he's not told Anderson yet."

Jason just shook his head. The nuances of the Kite's resignation letter were pretty much lost on him right now. His vision was starting to shift and blur despite the electrodes against his skull. He needed to curl up and sleep, without delay, before his head started to hurt in earnest, and instead what he had to do was go to Anderson and tell him G-Force was short a co-pilot. For the third time in his career.

"I'd best -"

"You're doing nothing." That was Mark's command voice back. Not the professional administrator he'd insisted he was for the past few months, but his old self. No, this was the man upon whose decisions the world had depended. And Jason, the man upon whose decisions the world depended now, could do nothing but sag in pure relief that right now, this minute, they didn't.

"There's a perfectly good bed in that corner. You need to sleep off that migraine. I'll find Rick and see if there's anything to be done, anything at all. If you want me to."

Jason didn't answer, just pushed himself to his feet and walked tiredly to the bed, kicking his shoes off along the way. Right now he could have slept anywhere. A genuine mattress complete with pillows and bedding was pure heaven. He sagged into it, curled onto his side facing the wall, and closed his eyes with a sigh. He was vaguely aware of sounds he presumed were Mark getting himself into the wheelchair and ready to go out, but he was asleep before the door opened.

* * *

Mark didn't dare even sigh until he'd closed the door behind him. _Man, what a godawful mess_. And that was without whatever Jason had meant when he'd said he'd blown his civilian cover. That was going to need fixing too, and fast. For now, though, he needed to find the Kite and have a serious talk with him. G-Force couldn't afford for him to quit now. They simply couldn't. Rick had to be made to understand that.

He contemplated where to go looking while heading for the main building, and decided to let Rick come find him. From his Team Seven office he could put out a public request, and provided Rick hadn't followed his own example and left the ISO grounds entirely, hopefully he should show in a hurry. Not least because, if he wanted a non-G-Force job, the executive officer of his current non-G-Force posting was the logical person for him to ask.

He didn't even need to do that. As he went into the office, Todd stood up quickly from the chair behind the desk. "Lieutenant Shayler's looking for you."

"He is? When?"

"About thirty seconds ago. He -"

"Catch him for me? It's urgent."

Todd pelted out of the door, and Mark moved to the real chair in a hurry. Rick was significantly taller than him; he didn't much enjoy the thought of being inches still lower during this discussion. Though it was probably a good thing that Rick had come looking for him. It meant he hadn't walked out of the front door and kept going.

"Commander?" Rick stood in the doorway, his face a mask of uncertainty.

"Come in, shut that, sit down." Mark tried to project reassurance, wondering just when his role had become 'agony aunt'. He waited until Rick had done just that, and he'd turned on the outside indications that they were not to be disturbed, before continuing. "I should tell you that I've just spoken to Jason."

Rick's expression was bleak. "That saves me some explanation. Then I'll be blunt. I'm a damn good pilot. Any chance of a transfer to Team Three?"

"Can we back off from that a bit?"

Rick shook his head, eyes downcast. "I'm not going to make a scene. I'll go along with any cover story Jason wants to use for people with black section clearance. But I'm not a security risk, and I'd like to do something useful."

 _You, me, Don Wade_... This time, though, he was going to try to put things right properly. Rick wasn't handicapped, physically or psychologically. He shouldn't be leaving a team which needed him. Making it work, though...this was so much easier when it was the enemy he was trying to manipulate and only short term consequences mattered.

"I've heard Jason's side of the story. How about you tell me yours?"

The other never glanced up, hands clenched into fists. "What's to tell? I tried, Commander. I really tried. But they don't want me there. They won't let me do anything. I've spent nine months on the Phoenix as a glorified autopilot - if that. If Jason wants something remotely complex done, he'll send the Owl back to fly her. Last week? You had the Kestrel out there being useful on Comsat Three. A fourteen year old kid who's been in birdstyle for a month and a half. Jason left me on the Phoenix, just like he always does. All I'm doing is causing tension. Believe it or not, I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing it for G-Force. I simply can't keep on sitting there without losing my temper. Whatever Jason said I've done...dammit, I was provoked, and not just once. I'm only human. And I know I'm finished there."

"Jason said pretty much what you have," Mark said simply. "And came to me because he knows he's screwed up, big time. I'd like to see you two talk about this before you walk away."

Rick did glance up at that. "So he can feel better about it? I guess this is where I should refuse and stand on my pride. Not going to, though. He's the commander of G-Force. Galaxy Security needs him functioning a whole lot more than it needs me. Tell me what he needs to hear and I'll say it."

Mark stared. "You're really serious, aren't you? You'd do it. Whatever is best for G-Force."

"Yup. I wanted the best solution to be the Kite as part of the team...but if it can't be that, then anything else I can do. Now, always. Go on, laugh."

"Laugh?" Mark considered the man in front of his desk. A year ago Rick had been the Team Seven prankster, renowned for practical jokes involving computers. That was gone now, lines of strain replacing the easy relaxation on his face. Rick might be saying he'd do anything for G-Force, but this was hurting him, no question. "No laughing here. Just trying to figure out if there's any way I can put this mess back together again."

Rick shook his head, some of the lines clearing. "I don't think so. They never wanted me. I don't think they ever wanted anyone. Except you, of course."

 _He'd do anything for G-Force. While I've steadfastly refused to go near that control room_. Mark suddenly found it hard to meet the other's eyes. _And here I am trying to push him back into a situation where, he's right, he's simply not wanted. Even if he is needed._

"Look, Rick, I know it's been hell. All I'm asking is for you to sit on this for a while. Right now Jason's crashed, sleeping off a migraine. Otherwise I'd haul him in here right now and see what we can thrash out. If you still want Team Three, we can probably arrange it for you. But let's not go there just yet."

Rick's face shifted into a mask of resignation. "If you say so, Commander."

 _Poor guy_. He'd see that Rick did get that Team Three place, if that was what he wanted...but couldn't they put things right without going that far? G-Force desperately needed someone in that co-pilot's chair, and Rick was far and away the best qualified candidate at the moment.

 _You could do it_ , a little voice said inside him, and he forced it back. Sure he could, just as long as things were going well and all he had to do was sit in the chair. The very first time they had to abandon ship, he was dead.

And without Jason, that was about all he could do for the moment. For that particular problem. "Has Jason said anything to you about his civilian cover being blown?"

Rick's eyes widened. "No. That's not good."

"It's not. Can you give me anywhere to start?"

Rick frowned. "I didn't see him at all today. So -"

"He'd have been at ISO Racing. Is Dave O'Leary about?"

And the colour drained from Rick's face. "He's next door. I wasn't paying much attention - but he had an audience. Something about drug cheats."

Mark swore. "Get him in here _now_."

This was the time when he most resented needing the wheelchair. Simple, stupid things. He wasn't asking for super fitness - but what he needed right now was to be able to stride into the common room and silence the rumours with a look of sheer intimidation. Instead he had to sit and wait while Rick jumped to his feet and did it for him.

Rick did leave the door open, and it was only moments before his voice rose over the relaxed chatter from next door.

"Dave, Commander Jarrald wants to see you."

"One minute, Rick. And then -"

" _Now_." There was more command behind that than Mark had believed the other capable of. Not only that, but he followed it up with, "and the rest of you stay here until Commander Jarrald's spoken to you."

"And who put you in charge, _Lieutenant_?" a voice he didn't recognise asked in a decidedly sarcastic tone.

"I'm passing on a direct order from your superior officer. Dave, you need to come with me."

There were sounds of chairs scraping on the floor, some somewhat disconcerted murmuring, and what Dave must have presumed was an inaudible whisper. "Hell, Rick, what did I do wrong this time?"

"Just come." Rick paused just outside the door and waved O'Leary inside. "Commander...?"

"Come in and shut the door. Dave, sit down."

He was amused to see the position Rick took up: leaning casually against the wall next to the door, legs crossed at the ankles and arms folded. Not quite Jason's intimidating presence, perhaps - but, given his six foot four height, not someone you'd take lightly.

"Commander?" There was distinct nervousness in O'Leary's tone.

"I need to hear this tale you've been spreading." Not much of an excuse, and he could see O'Leary frowning: _for this he hauls me in here?_ but it was true, and he did have the rank to insist.

"Sir, I was telling them about the drug bust at ISO Racing. Alouita admitted to taking drugs."

" _What_?"

Dave looked anywhere but at him. "He came right out and said it. He's been cheating. They've got a new testing system in place and he got caught. I always wondered why he had such a high dropout rate. I guess it was times he knew he wouldn't pass the tests."

"And he admitted it?"

"Yes, sir. In front of four other people, including me."

Mark sagged back in his chair. What the hell was Jason playing at? Deny everything and let someone else sort it out, that was what they'd been told right from the start. Admitting it made it hellishly difficult to explain away, and admitting it in public was even worse. He needed to put a lid on this, right now, and get black section on it as soon as possible.

"I want you to stop talking about it. That's an order."

He saw Dave swallow hard. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Go ahead."

"Mark, I'm sorry. I know you two are old friends. But you can't keep this one quiet. Commander Nykinnen has to know, and this has to be dealt with properly. It's a major issue. Security officers aren't allowed to take those drugs any more than race drivers are. I can't stand by and watch you sweep this under the carpet."

"And you'd do what, precisely?" Mark put a good deal of ice into his voice, and watched the other squirm in his chair. Behind Dave, Rick was frowning, obviously uncertain as to where this was going. Truth be told, Mark wasn't sure himself. But this might well have reached the point of no return.

"I'd go talk to Commander Nykinnen and tell him everything. Please don't let it come to that."

"And if I ordered you to keep quiet? Told you this was all a misunderstanding?"

"I don't think you can." O'Leary put his hands flat on the desk - open, trusting. He'd paid attention in at least one lecture, then. His body language was spot on. "I can't work with someone who's admitted to taking that sort of drug. Not here, not on the track. It's dangerous for everyone. I would report it, and I'd report you for trying to hide it. And the same goes for Commander Nykinnen too, if he tried to cover it up. Not sure who I'd go to over his head, but I can find out. Mark - don't do this. I won't let you no matter how hard you make things for me. In any case, it'll be all over the press in a few days from the ISO Racing end. Failed drug tests go public in racing - they think it keeps the rest of us honest. Jason's won enough that it'll be regional news at the very least."

Mark dropped his head into his hands, only vaguely aware he was doing it. O'Leary was dead right - discovering his immediate superior was covering up something like this was cause for going higher up, and he was entirely justified in being suspicious about the demand for secrecy.

"Mark, you have to tell him," Rick said. "This hits the papers in a few days? It's a disaster."

Rick hadn't said what he had to tell him, of course, had left it open for him to come up with a clever cover story...but he simply couldn't think of one. There was a group of people sitting and waiting in the common room who he knew a whole lot less well than he knew O'Leary, and he couldn't sort this out alone. Not in five minutes. No, Jason had burnt his own damn boats when he admitted to drug-taking in front of Dave. He'd have to live with Mark making a decision on which of his friends were trustworthy.

"Can we trust you?" he asked.

Dave shrugged. "To protect Jason from the consequences of being a drug cheat? No, you can't. Not for any reason."

"Jason's not a drug cheat."

"He admitted it. Straight out, in front of a bunch of people who trusted him. If he didn't take drugs, why the hell would he say he did?"

"Because he couldn't tell the truth." Mark glanced round the room, looking for inspiration that didn't come among the shelves and files. "Jason can't afford any sort of investigation into why he drops out of races or why his bloodwork's odd."

Dave made to get to his feet, his eyes wide, and instantly Rick was behind him, twisting an arm behind his back painfully enough to make him gasp and collapse back into his chair. "Sit down and listen, Dave. This is serious."

Mark could only imagine what was running through the other's mind right now - Jason was Spectran, maybe? He'd stumbled across a whole cell of infiltrators, and maybe the entire command structure of Team Seven was involved? Certainly the look on his face was pure horror, and Mark didn't keep him waiting any longer.

"Jason's the Condor. What's screwed his blood tests is interstellar jump."

Dave's jaw just about hit the floor, and Rick released him, since he patently wasn't going anywhere.

"Of course, we could just be saying that," Rick said, and fished in his pocket. "Needing more proof than Mark's word, Dave?"

The other swivelled in his chair, a slow flush spreading. "You know I do. You've sat through Infiltrators 101 the same as I have. What is this, some sort of test? Yeah, yeah, what I do is go along with it, let you believe I'm convinced, and go right to Nykinnen the moment I can. Except that I don't believe you'd trash Jason's reputation over something like this. If this is a loyalty test, it's a damn convincing one. And I don't want to take this out of this room, because I've no idea what Nykinnen knows either."

"Not as stupid as he looks," Rick said, an edge of humour in his tone, and he reached forward to place something on the table in from of Dave. "Take a good look."

As he pulled his hand back, Mark realised he'd presented the other with his bracelet. And this time, Dave laughed out loud. "You? You have to be kidding me."

Rick snatched the bracelet back as if he'd been burned, his face scarlet. "Yeah, sure. I'm walking around with a fake G-Force bracelet in my pocket to see who I can fool. Believe what the hell you like. I'm done trying to make it easy for you. There's a nice cosy cell in black section you can sit in for the next couple of years, because I sure as hell don't care."

The door to the passageway closed behind him with a slam that ruffled the papers on the desk, and Mark passed a hand across his face before meeting the other's horrified eyes.

"Commander?"

"He wasn't kidding you. Rick is the Kite. Lieutenant, you really do need to learn to think before you open your mouth. Now, if you need proof, I recommend those official reporting procedures you mentioned. Start with Commander Nykinnen, and the appropriate person above him is probably Major Grant in black section if you think people are impersonating G-Force operatives without authorisation. Aside from that, you keep your mouth shut or I'll call black section security in on it myself. I don't have time for this."

Dave gulped. "Yes, Commander. I…don't think he was kidding me. Bad choice of words. I'm sorry. But...those people I just talked to, that Rick told to wait for you? You want me to go out and tell them I was leading them on and you've torn strips off me for it? Because you don't do this sort of thing, secret interviews and all, and they're going to think it's real odd. Odd's bad, right? Me, though - it wouldn't be the first time I've been caught embroidering. I've tried real hard not to do it any more, but they don't know that."

Mark sat back, considering. Not a bad idea, but it wouldn't work. Like Dave had said earlier, chances were this would hit the press, and at that point any kind of yes-he-is-no-he-isn't havering over Jason's guilt would be decidedly out of character, both for him personally, and for anyone involved in ISO Security. The temptation to pick up the phone, dial his own number, and tell Jason to get down here and sort out his own damn mess was strong. He _so_ wanted to get back to deciding whether to blow the mecha up now or later.

What to tell them, though? Time to fall back on the old favourites. A half-truth was always better than a lie.

"You can tell them I've torn strips off you for spreading rumours...but it's happened because Jason's been involved in a medical trial here at ISO. He knew he wasn't allowed to talk about it to anyone, so when he was told he'd failed the drug test he panicked. It needs to be kept quiet for security reasons and that means they don't discuss it any further with anyone, including one another. Anyone who won't buy it can come talk to me - but not just now. I need to go to black section and sort it out from this end."

Dave nodded slowly. "That'll work. You want to do some yelling?"

"Since this office is fully soundproofed when the doors are shut?" He caught the other's eye, holding it until he was sure Dave was aware that what was coming next was serious. "I just trusted you with information that could destroy G-Force. Don't let me down."

"No, sir." Dave took that as his hint to leave, but as he reached the door to the common room he paused and turned, his hand on the handle. "Mark? Can I ask a question?"

"Sure."

"Who are you?"

He should have known it was coming. Dave was no fool, and at the point that Rick showed his bracelet, anyone would have wondered why Mark appeared to be more senior yet. A week ago he'd have said he was an administrator with a high security clearance, here to help Rick and Jason maintain their cover. Now, though? He'd had enough of paperwork, and he was so much more than this.

"I'm the Eagle."

And Dave didn't look shocked, didn't as much as glance at the chair, didn't express disbelief. He simply nodded, threw a salute sharper than Mark had believed him capable of, and left.


	4. Chapter 4

Having to get back into the chair to go to black section dented Mark's optimism some, but not a great deal. He felt better. He was the Eagle, his physical problems were temporary, and right now, for the first time in forever, he felt like the same man who had worn birdstyle and saved the world on a regular basis.

It wasn't long since he'd been in black section, but the last time he'd been here he'd felt like an imposter. An instructor, and a visiting one at that. Now he exited from the elevator and wheeled himself up to the guardpost feeling like he belonged.

"I need to speak to Chief Anderson, urgently."

"He's in his office, sir," the security officer told him.

 _Yeah, and it's in the oldest part of the building, up two flights of stairs from the highest point I can get to in an elevator_. Mark just looked at him, and the man flushed in sudden realisation and looked away, reaching for the phone.

"Chief, it's Jamieson, duty officer on the elevator guardpost. I have Commander Jarrald here for you." He stood listening, the phone held such that Mark couldn't easily hear what was being said, nodding occasionally.

"Yes, Chief." He passed the phone over to Mark.

"Mark here," he said.

"Mark, this isn't a good time. Is it urgent?"

 _No, I just came for a chat_. Mark pushed the irritation down. "Priority one, Chief." Urgent, but not drop-everything.

"Can it wait ten minutes? I'll come find you." The phone went down before he even had a chance to respond, and Mark felt his lip curl. Sit in the lobby to be called for, like a visitor? Oh, he didn't think so. Not this time. Not any more. He caught the eye of the duty officer.

"Do me a favour? When Chief Anderson comes looking for me, tell him I'm in the G-Force ready room."

.

Past the guardpost, turn to the left down the central corridor of black section, then the second turning on the right into a much narrower one. That corridor wiggled and it sloped as it crossed from the new part of the building to the older section. When he'd first come here, a naive, arrogant sixteen-year-old, the older building had been all there was. It had been suggested that they move into the new part. Just once. Jason had gone completely ballistic, Princess and Tiny had backed him up, and no more had been said about it. So G-Force's accommodations had remained in the same place, and the architecture had been adjusted as required.

He remembered the last time he'd come up here vividly. Beyond vividly. Chris had just told him he was fine and cleared him to go back on duty and, so confused he hadn't even started to process it, he'd headed back to the ready room on pure instinct. Only when he'd stopped just outside had it hit him. He couldn't do it. He knew there was something desperately wrong - but he also knew he couldn't put this decision on anyone else. There were voices just barely audible from inside the ready room - cheerful, friendly, a little edge of worry that he could only distinguish because he knew them so well. Worry for him. His team. His friends.

He'd leant against the wall and listened to the voices, as what he had to do crystallised in his mind. And so he'd turned and walked away, nodding to the guards as though nothing was wrong. Half an hour later he'd left ISO, fully intending to never come back.

Well, he wasn't exactly back. Wouldn't be until he was on his feet. He was, however, here, and there were voices inside. One deep and one female. Princess and Tiny. But it wasn't his ready room any more; he was a visitor. Mark reached out and knocked on the door.

The voices stopped. Nobody knocked on this door. Everyone who had cause to come here knew the internal phone number, if not the bracelet frequency, and simply called. At the edge of his enhanced hearing, he could hear light footsteps approaching. Far too late, all he wanted to do was turn and flee. What had possessed him to come here, now, in a _wheelchair_?

The door opened, and he steeled himself.

" _Mark_!" And Princess's arms were round his neck, and her head on his shoulder. He felt the chair rock, almost tipping, and obviously she did too, because she backed off hastily. "I'm sorry."

 _Oh, to hell with protocol. To hell with stiff upper lips, and standing on my dignity. To hell with being strong_. Mark put his arms out. "Don't be sorry. Do that again."

And she did.

"Are you going to come in, or should we start using the window as the way in and out?" Tiny's amused voice said an indeterminate length of time later.

Mark laughed, and pushed Princess back to standing. "I'll come in - briefly. I'm waiting for Anderson."

He saw Princess's face fall even as he said it, and cursed himself. _Way to spoil the moment, idiot_. "I meant to do this...a long time ago. Sorry."

"Don't you dare apologise." She wiped tears from her eyes, and turned back into the room. "Come drink coffee. If you want...Jason said you don't drink decaf any more."

 _Jason's out of date_. Mark smiled as he put his hands to the rims of the wheels and headed in after her. "Decaf's fine. No milk, no sugar."

"Hardly seems worth drinking it like that," Tiny said as he added coffee grounds and water to the percolator. "Jason's going to be pissed he missed you."

"I just spoke to Jason."

Tiny half-turned, a worried frown on his face. "Is he okay?"

"He's fine. The powers of motor racing changed their drug testing system, and he failed some test. I'm firefighting, but I'm going to need Anderson to retrofit some evidence."

"He can't have failed a drug test."

"He didn't, not on residues. They've started looking for evidence of non-natural performance."

Tiny's face fell. "Crap. How the hell does he get out of that one?"

Mark outlined the story he'd told Dave to use, finishing with, "but since he admitted taking drugs, denial's going to have to come from a higher level than me. I figure black section saying they've been doing reflex tests and muscle stimulation on him should do it - especially since he's got to be squeaky-clean to ordinary tests. Sound plausible to you?"

Tiny nodded. "I guess so. He'd be a likely candidate for something like that with a race driver's reflexes - and he's young enough that they'd swallow him panicking at it being discovered, when he'd been told it was top secret."

"That's what I thought." He put his hand out for the mug, and sat there sipping the coffee, looking round the ready room. It hadn't changed a great deal. The ping-pong table was folded up against the wall, and he had the impression that the stool behind Keyop's drumkit was higher, but apart from that it looked just as it always had. A few comfortable chairs and a sofa, a small kitchen area where he was now, screens on two of the walls and external windows on the other two, with a view out across the grounds to the ocean. There were so many folders and books open on the table that its surface was barely visible, and a heap of racing magazines overflowing from one of the seats of the sofa onto the carpet. The bookcases had obvious gaps on their shelves, but remained in good order. That would be Princess's work - she'd always insisted on keeping the shelves orderly. She was a naturally tidy person. Even now, she'd moved over to the table, placed her mug carefully on a mat, and was straightening up her work area, making a pile of books to return to the shelves and closing the folders she was finished with. He wondered what she was working on at the moment. He had absolutely no idea.

What was missing was any sign of Rick. There wasn't anything here that he didn't recognise. Nothing that he looked at and thought, _yeah, that's something a computer hacker would do_. No computer magazines. Nothing new associated with fast jets, either. The shelf he'd always kept his reference manuals on looked exactly as he remembered it. Did Rick never come in here at all?

"Mark?"

He abruptly realised it wasn't the first thing Tiny had said, and jerked himself back to reality.

"Yeah? Great coffee, by the way."

Tiny looked at his mug with a slightly bemused air. Entirely normal coffee, to be honest. It just tasted better in here.

"I have something for you. If you want it." He placed the bracelet on the counter and pushed it towards Mark, making no attempt to hand it directly to him. Mark knew what it was even before he saw it.

"Does Anderson know you're giving it back to me?"

"Anderson doesn't know you stopped having it." Tiny's face wore an open, slightly apologetic expression, but his voice was confident. "I hung onto it myself, waiting for the right time. I figured he wouldn't ask you for it back, since he didn't at the debrief."

Princess, over at the table drinking her own coffee, frowned slightly. "Why do you have it, Tiny?"

Mark felt himself flush, and saw the other's subtle shift of body language. _Don't ask, I'll tell you later_. He was highly grateful that she picked up on it instantly. He had no desire to explain - or hear it explained - that Tiny had picked up the bracelet after he, Mark, had flung it across the room in a fit of frustrated pique. At the time he had been beyond unhappy. Now it all seemed rather embarrassing, and extremely childish. And he very much wanted the bracelet back. Permanently, if possible.

"Thank you," he said simply, picking it up and snapping it onto his wrist. Here, in black section, he could wear it openly. Sitting in the ready room drinking coffee, with Tiny washing what looked like ISO's entire supply of teaspoons and Princess doing her own thing instead of hovering protectively, he finally felt like he belonged again.

 _Of course, that's why they're doing it_ , his subconscious nagged. _To put you at ease_.

He didn't care. That hug had felt very real. Not at all planned or contrived. And, just as soon as he was back on his feet, he could finally do something he'd promised himself years ago. Princess was no longer in his chain of command. Once he wasn't a useless cripple any more, he'd ask her out. He was pretty sure she'd say yes.

"Everyone wants us today," Tiny commented at the knock on the door, heading to open it. "Chief?"

"I'm looking for Mark."

Mark drained his mug, put it back on the counter, and spun his chair round to head for the door. "You found me. Can I talk to you somewhere that's not up three flights of stairs?"

"Of course. I'm sure one of the briefing rooms is free."

.

It was briefing room two in the end, the smaller and less plush one. Painted walls rather than panelled wood, and a big rectangular table formed from a whole load of little ones pushed together. Anderson pulled one chair right out of the way near the end of the table, pulled out another for himself round the corner, and sat down.

"So, what can I do for you?"

 _You can wait thirty seconds_. Mark was done with looking up at everyone, at least when there was an option. He wheeled his chair into the gap, applied the brakes, tested the rigidity of the table. Good and solid. As casually as he could manage, he pushed himself to standing, shuffled across to the nearest chair, and sat down again. Not exactly instant, but good enough. He even managed to resist the temptation to smirk at the astonishment on Anderson's face. Well, the Security Chief would just have to get used to the fact that the Eagle wasn't as crippled as he had been any more.

"Jason has a problem with his cover occupation. A bad one."

Anderson frowned. "Go on."

"I don't have all the details yet, but it seems that the racing drug test procedure has changed to something that's picking up his heightened activity levels as evidence of performance enhancement. He's admitted taking drugs to them."

The frown deepened. "And why did he do that? For that matter, where is he?"

Mark chose to ignore the second question. "I don't know first-hand. It came to me via Team Seven. One of the operatives there also drives for ISO Racing, and was telling the story to a highly interested audience. I thought I should jump in and stop it. I think I've got it under control, but it is going to need some high-powered backup evidence."

Anderson nodded, taking a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. "Tell me what you need."

Mark explained his cover story yet again, then leant back and waited for questions. They weren't long in coming.

"You told this O'Leary the truth? Can he be trusted?"

Mark resisted the urge to drum his fingers on the table. "I've known him a long time - so has Jason. I hope he's trustworthy, but he does have a tendency to speak first and think second. I recommend you haul him in here and have Grant put the fear of God into him."

Anderson made a note. "It won't be Grant - I'll do it myself. Apart from that, Chris can handle it. Reflex stimulation experiments of some kind, strictly secret. Quite why the Condor couldn't have denied everything for a couple of hours I do not know, but I'll take that up with him when I see him. Thank you, Mark. We'll take it from here."

.

It wasn't until he was in the elevator returning to the more public levels of ISO that Mark digested what Anderson had said. Take it up with Jason when he saw him? Normally he'd have called within seconds of hearing something like that and hauled the miscreant in for a dressing-down. Which meant he knew, at least to some extent, that it wasn't a good idea. Whether or not he suspected that Jason was in fact crashed on Mark's bed at this very moment, Mark didn't know. Anderson could find out in moments if he chose, provided Jason was wearing his bracelet. The fact that he hadn't done so meant, presumably, that Jason was being given some privacy – something he'd too often desperately needed without getting it. Anderson must know that there was something badly wrong, and that Jason was more than fragile right now.

Should he have told Anderson where Jason was - and that he was miserable with migraine again? Heck, should he have told him about Rick's resignation? It wasn't like his attempts so far had fixed anything. The only thing that was going to help there was getting Rick and Jason in the same room - and even then, he didn't hold out too much hope.

The elevator stopped on the ground floor and Mark wheeled himself out, avoiding a whole crowd of Team Three pilots in flight suits heading in, presumably up to their common room on the second floor. This was what Rick wanted, and he'd fit in very well - every one of them tall, fit and confident, every one of them a crack pilot. All just back from a sortie of some kind, from what he could hear. Not a training session either. They'd shot something down, and were inordinately pleased with themselves. He'd have dearly liked to ask for details, but Lieutenant Commander Jarrald of Team Seven was beneath the notice of such lofty mortals even if he did technically outrank them. None of them even looked at him as they passed either side of his chair on their way into the elevator. If he asked, they'd be polite enough, probably even explain it in nauseating detail - but he couldn't face their condescending sympathy. He'd watch the newsfeeds later.

If Team Three could do more than just keep the enemy occupied until G-Force could get there, that would make a difference. They'd never do much more than that, though. A worryingly large proportion of mecha had always required Fiery Phoenix to take them out, something not available to a standard fighter jet. Which meant G-Force had to stay operational. Right now, improbable as it seemed, it looked like it was going to come down to their crippled ex-commander to keep them that way.

Jason was still curled on his side as Mark gently closed the door behind him with barely a click. _He must be dead tired_ , he thought. He'd have said it was impossible to sneak up on even a sleeping Jason without waking him. Unfortunately, he did need to wake him. Chris Johnson would be wanting him in the very near future, so a contrite junior lieutenant could trail after him to ISO Racing to get his license returned, once it had been explained that he hadn't taken drugs after all and had been trying to cover up what he had been told was a top secret medical trial with galactic security implications.

He considered his friend, who didn't appear to have even twitched during the previous hour. Dead tired, dreadfully stressed...and would the migraine have subsided? If not, it was time Chris knew about it. Mark headed for his kitchen area by the window, determinedly stood up, even though by this stage in the day he needed to lean heavily on the counter and had no hope of walking, and got the coffee percolator going. Agony aunt, going on coffee maker, still a very long way from active service security operative.

It was bubbling noisily and filling the room with the smell of the best decaf the ISO store stocked when Jason stretched and sat up.

"Better?" Mark asked.

The other nodded, and opened his mouth to speak. What came out was a near-soundless croak. Jason cleared his throat and tried again with no better result, then coughed. That didn't seem to help either, and Mark hastily poured milk into a mug and added coffee and sugar.

"You'll have to come get it." Even first thing in the morning and fully rested he couldn't have carried a mug of coffee anywhere.

Jason joined him, leaning on the counter and looking out to sea. He spent the next couple of minutes alternately clearing his throat and sipping at the coffee, and finally found some voice.

"I hate it when that happens." There was no weight behind it at all, though, and he coughed hard afterwards and cleared his throat yet again. "Bloody vocal cords."

"This has happened before? You need to tell Chris -"

Jason's sideways glance was weary rather than furious. "I try not to make the same stupid mistake twice. There's a throat mike built into my birdstyle, and my bracelet's set to respond to the transmute action even if talking isn't happening."

"Oh." There wasn't much else he could say, so Mark went back to admiring the white crests on the waves and drinking coffee. He'd had far too much coffee today, even if it was decaf, he decided. He abandoned his mug still half-full, considered the relative merits of chair and walking frame, and was forced to admit he needed the chair to get to the bathroom.

By the time he came back and determinedly pushed himself to his feet yet again to drink his coffee, Jason had wandered over to the bookcase, mug in hand, and was inspecting the titles, eyebrows raised. Mark knew why, too. Not an aircraft magazine in sight. Not a flight manual, not a chart.

"Detective stories?" His voice was back to normal. Light, faintly querulous, utterly unsuitable for the man who could make whole battalions of Spectran troops turn and run just by appearing.

"I like solving problems," Mark told him calmly. "And they have a bunch of good put-down lines."

"National Geographic?"

"It's interesting."

"And the decaf?"

"Laugh and I'll kill you." It came out before he could think about moderating his words, or even his tone.

Jason put the mug down deliberately on the top shelf and turned to face him, frowning. "I figured you were having trouble sleeping or something, because the whole of Team Seven knows you're a bigger caffeine addict than Nykinnen these days. But when did that turn into a touchy sub..." His voice trailed off, and he pinched the bridge of his nose hard. "Oh, man. Tell me I'm wrong."

 _What, about me wanting my job back - your job, now - so bad it hurts?_ Mark just shook his head. "You don't need to worry. Commander."

"Worry?" Jason's voice cracked on the last syllable, misbehaving again. "Dammit, Mark, you get yourself fit again and I'll resign so fast it'll be redshifted. Like I said before. I'm so not cut out for this."

"You meant what you said before? It wasn't just the migraine talking?"

Jason shook his head wearily. "No. If there was another realistic candidate, I'd have resigned already. _Is_ that why you're on decaf?"

Mark felt himself flush. "I figured if Force Two got desperate..."

"Force Two can go whistle. _We're_ desperate."

"You're going to have to use Rick if you're that desperate. I'm months away from being fit." _And verging on not being able to stand up any longer_. Mark shifted his weight from one leg to the other, trying to stave off the twitching which told him that his leg muscles hadn't just had enough for the day, they were about to deposit him unceremoniously on the floor, and abruptly Jason was at his side.

"You okay?"

"I need to sit down," he admitted.

Jason reached out a long arm and pulled a chair close. "Then sit down. You have to take -"

He stopped at the tap at the door, and glanced uncertainly at Mark.

 _Like I'm going to go answer it_. Mark lowered himself carefully onto the chair. "Get that for me?" He didn't have visitors; this was going to be for Jason anyway.

He was right. Chris Johnson, head of black section medical, stood there, his discomfort apparent in every inch of his stiff posture.

"Jason? Good, I was looking for you. You need to come with me - I'll explain everything on the way to ISO Racing." He looked into the room, and smiled his professional doctor's smile. "Hail and farewell, I'm afraid, Mark. It makes no sense for you to be there."

Jason held up a hand, and threw him a look which said more than words ever could, and then they were gone, Jason pulling the door closed behind him as Chris asked whether he wanted to drive. Mark could hear no more, and useless loneliness washed over him again. Would they even think to tell him how it had gone? Quite possibly not.

* * *

"Did Mark tell you what the cover story is?" Chris asked as Jason pulled away from the checkpoint at the entrance to ISO.

"No," Jason said bluntly. That, of course, left him open to a whole bunch of other questions, about how come he didn't know, and how come Mark had been running about fixing Jason's mess. He didn't much want to admit to how poorly he was coping right now. The fact that Chris didn't ask suggested that he'd already guessed.

"The story is that you've been on a reflex testing program, where we've used electronic stimulation to push your muscles beyond what they could normally do. That scary man, Major Grant, told you that under no circumstances were you to divulge anything about it to anyone. We selected you because, as a top race driver, your reflexes are better than other people's. You don't know what the program is about, but suspect it's associated with a second G-Force team, for which you, of course, aren't remotely qualified. You've signed some scary forms about confidentiality, despite being just a guinea-pig. You panicked when they hauled you in for failing the drug test and figured taking the fall was required to protect the program. A reasonable guess, but what I'm going to strongly imply is that ISO would rather tell a few high-level and of course above suspicion racing officials the truth than have 'ISO Racing driver is drug cheat' plastered all over the papers."

Jason nodded. Flattering the people you were trying to deceive was always a good technique. Mark hadn't lost his touch when it came to such things. He must remember to thank him for it later.

"So I'm going to suggest they do a full drug screen right now, or as soon as it's convenient for them" Chris continued. "Blood, urine, anything else they care to name. They'll almost certainly decline and do them later at random – I would, if I was still at all suspicious I might be being set up. I'll offer them a bunch of our test results too, to demonstrate what residues our muscle stimulation can leave."

Jason frowned, keeping his eyes on the road as he merged with the traffic on the main route into town. "And where do those come from?"

"Your standard implant tests. It's all electronic stimulation." He chuckled to himself. "The only complication was removing 'Condor' from all the data headers. I hope I caught them all..."

"Tell me you're joking."

"I'm joking. Rick did it."

Jason felt himself stiffen, and only hoped Chris hadn't noticed. It wasn't even that he didn't trust Rick - without question, the Kite was the best computer person they had, and file editing was beyond a waste of his talents. He was just trying not to think about him right now. After all, as far as Jason knew, Rick considered himself not a member of G-Force any more, though it was a relief that he'd evidently not said anything to the black section senior staff. 'Let me know how you want to handle this' was how the resignation letter had ended. Mark had dealt with that too, he hoped. He had no idea how.

It was a ten minute drive out to ISO Racing, the rest of it spent in silence until they pulled into the industrial park and Jason abruptly wasn't sure where to go next.

"Who are we going to talk to? And do they know we're coming?"

"Everyone who was involved in your suspension, I hope." Chris chuckled again. "I believe your boss at ISO Racing was more than a little taken aback to get a phone call from the man everyone knows is the head of the G-Force operation. Anderson gave him the job of getting them back together. Park right out front."

"I'm not supposed to -"

"No, you're not. But right now you're chauffeuring the most high-powered medic in ISO, and you park where I say."

At that, Jason could only sag in relief that matters were out of his hands. He had plenty of experience at pretending to be just a driver.

.

And Chris apparently had more experience than Jason had ever suspected of being in charge. There wasn't a flicker of hesitation in his voice as he told the hastily assembled group of men that their tests were wrong and that young Lieutenant Alouita was to be cleared immediately. Jason stood behind and to one side, eyes on the floor, pretending horrified embarrassment instead of the guilty pleasure at revenge that he actually felt. Gordon, the man who had stripped his car, appeared particularly shocked. The ISO Racing managers looked as if Christmas had come early. Ed was grinning from ear to ear. Only the track manager was frowning.

"Doctor, I appreciate that your trial has caused the results - but the fact remains that you have been giving this man an unfair advantage. Drugs, electronics, whatever the cause of his heightened reflexes...he can't continue to race with it."

Chris silenced him with a glare that Jason would have been proud of. "He doesn't race with it. As I explained, the effect is temporary, only while the stimulus is applied. You did have his car tested, I believe? Not to mention that you've tested him on numerous occasions right after the races and found no more adrenaline than would be considered normal." He snorted derisively. "In fact, being on this program may be a detriment to Alouita's racing skills. Our test subjects have consistently reported abnormal tiredness and stiffness following sessions."

"But, Doctor -"

"That would be 'Professor'." Chris slammed a pile of papers down on the table, and every man in the room jumped. "Alouita's results are right here. If they go public I will personally destroy every one of you. You can return them to him tomorrow, after you've confirmed what I told you. You'll want to do traditional tests as well, if you don't trust mine. I'd lay money he's cleaner than every one of you. You do caffeine, alcohol and painkillers, and probably don't even consider them to be drugs. He doesn't take any of them. Questions?"

"Professor," the ISO Racing director said hesitantly," your integrity is not in question. Our testing procedures -"

"Have interacted in an unfortunate way with a top secret medical trial which has implications for planetary defence. So go back to using the old procedures on him. Is this a problem?"

There was a great deal of shaking of heads.

"Then we're done here. Be sure those papers get back to me. Good evening, gentlemen."

Even the Eagle couldn't have swept out of the room more impressively, and Jason was only half acting as he caught Ed's eye in a shared moment of astonishment before hurrying after him.

"Professor?" he asked as he started the car.

"You don't think I'm entitled to it?"

"I've never heard you use it."

Chris laughed out loud. "No, you wouldn't have. It's an honorary position, from...not the most prestigious institution of all time, and I'm pretty darn sure they only did it in the hopes of getting ISO sponsorship. But technically I am Professor Johnson, when I choose to use it."

Jason said nothing, keeping his eyes on the road. It had never really occurred to him before, but of course G-Force weren't the only people unable to get credit for what they did. Chris, Mike Bennett... their implant research was cutting edge. Revolutionary. Probably Nobel prize material. And yet here was Chris, 'only' a doctor, and the only people offering him accolades were the minnows looking for what they could get out of it.

"Thanks," he said. "I owe you. We all do."


	5. Chapter 5

_I did it. I actually quit._

Rick would have liked for it to make him feel better. It didn't. He'd assumed that Mark would go along with it, agree to set up the transfer to Team Three, get him out of G-Force's hair as quickly and quietly as possible. Instead, everyone was prevaricating, apparently in order to keep him in position. Unless he was exceptionally lucky, he was going to end up having to fly missions with four people who not only didn't want him there, they now knew he didn't want to be there either. He couldn't even start to imagine just how unpleasant that could get.

He wanted to talk to someone. He _needed_ to talk to someone. Who, though? Jason simply wouldn't treat him as an equal, and goodness knew he'd tried. The rest of G-Force couldn't care less where he went, as long as it was away from them. Dimitri would probably be replacing him on G-Force and absolutely did not need to start off by having Rick unload on him. Dylan might be Force Two's golden boy, but he was still a kid. Everyone else he knew in black section apparently thought Jason could do no wrong. Out here, of his closer acquaintances only Dave knew that he was the Kite…and had done so for a whole eighteen hours. He'd have liked to ask Commander Nykinnen, with his calm manner and knack of getting people to see things they should have seen all along, but that would be effectively going over Mark's head. Mark was the one person he absolutely couldn't afford to tee off, controlling as he did the recommendations for promotion from Team Seven.

He reached the canteen counter, and eyed the menu unenthusiastically. He really couldn't face cooked breakfast right now. Toast, cereal and orange juice, and he headed for the emptiest table in the room, over in the far corner.

The only other person sitting at it looked up and nodded to him as he sat down, and Rick almost laughed out loud. Sometimes fate made decisions for you. He knew this man, or, at least, knew who he was. Probably wasn't supposed to tell him anything at all concerning black section, but hey, what real difference could it make now?

"Don Wade, right?"

The other paused, his last forkful of egg half way to his mouth. "Yes…but I'm afraid I don't remember who you are."

 _Here goes nothing_. "My name's Rick Shayler. I do the same job you used to."

He hadn't anticipated Don going sheet-white, and hastily elaborated, as quietly as possible. "I'm the Phoenix's current co-pilot. But not for very much longer. Can I talk to you? There aren't too many people who've been in this position."

"Yes…I guess so." Don glanced around. "Should we be discussing this in here?"

"No. My quarters –"

"I'd prefer mine."

Rick nodded, and pushed his untouched breakfast away from him. "Okay. Lead the way."

.

Don's quarters were in a side wing of the main building, in a section which, from the contents of the noticeboards – almost entirely league tables for various varieties of target shooting and martial arts – Rick guessed to be mainly occupied by security staff. He commented as much, and Don flushed.

"It's an easy way for them to keep an eye on me. Everyone else on my corridor works in black section security. They know exactly what my history is, and aren't going to get tricked into treating me as a human being."

He unlocked and opened a door on the right hand side, about half way down this section of corridor, and turned on the light.

It wasn't a large room, and appeared even smaller because the shutters were fastened tight. High bed with a desk underneath, a couple of cupboards, a small TV on the top of the low one, a second chair. There were chemistry texts on the desk, and a pile of handwritten notes. A cork board over the desk held diagrams which Rick vaguely recognised as being chemical compounds. Organic, if he was remembering his long-neglected chemistry correctly.

"Have a seat," Don said. "Sorry – I expect your quarters are a whole lot nicer, but to go into black section I have to be under armed guard and I don't react well to it. Plus I'm not good with windows. You knew that, of course."

It wasn't a question, but it might as well have been. Rick felt himself flush. "I hacked into your personnel file a while back when your name came up and nobody would tell me who you were. It mentioned agoraphobia. It didn't mention why you'd be under armed guard in black section but wandering around freely out here."

"I don't think they know what to do with someone who knows all about black section but doesn't have a clearance and isn't going to get one. They'd have locked me up forever, except that Jason refused to let it happen and they need to keep him sweet. Out here? It's not like I'm going to leave." He shrugged. "Anyway, enough about me. What did you want to ask?"

Rick looked around him, and abruptly had no idea. Don hadn't resigned – he'd had the job taken away from him. He wasn't exactly after a posting as a fighter pilot.

But he did know what it was like to be on the outside looking in, knowing that what the world needed was for G-Force to go on without you.

"I resigned from G-Force yesterday," he said simply. "Jason doesn't trust me to do my job, and the rest of the team don't want me there. Now I'm looking for a transfer to something else. Admin are telling me to hang in there, the team just want rid of me, Jason apparently wants me to sit and play autopilot. Is it wrong for me to want a life after G-Force?"

Don paused. Almost smiled, before his face hardened back into that rigid, show-nothing mask. "No. But if you want me to tell you how to get one, you're asking the wrong person. I spend my days testing paint compounds."

"But not in a cell."

Don sighed. "Not in a cell. Big deal. Actually, that's not fair. It _is_ a big deal. And you know why I'm not in a cell? Like I said. Jason. He's fair, and he's not afraid to stand up to authority when they're not being fair. Do you get on with him?"

Rick grimaced, thinking of how he'd naively assumed things would be. "We got on pretty well before I joined G-Force."

"Then go talk to him again. You must have a cover job here. Surely you can get a legitimate-looking transfer from that?"

 _Because trying to talk to him's worked so well so far. And you're just sending me back to Mark, who wants me to stay put._ But that was obviously all Don had to give, and Rick nodded, trying to project a positive air. Just for a moment there, he'd seen more than the damaged ex-prisoner…and he'd liked what he'd seen. ISO would be a lonely place for him in the future, even if he did get the transfer he wanted. Having someone to talk to, who understood what it was like to lose G-Force, would be worth having. "I'll try that. Thanks, Don. I appreciate…not being judged."

Don shook his head, hands shaking, eyes on the floor. "I gave up judging people. I made too many fatal mistakes. I hope you get what you want."

 _What I want has been and gone_. But saying that would be harsh, since it was even more true for Wade. Instead, Rick quietly headed for the door, mentally running through what he needed to say to Jason. It wasn't a discussion he was looking forward to.

* * *

Mark returned from his post-breakfast physio session exhausted, but feeling as if he might finally be getting somewhere. Crutches, at least under supervision, and something marginally more like walking than shuffling. True, after the session was over he was back in the chair again, but it was definite progress. The end wasn't in sight, but he was finally daring to believe that there would be one.

He'd steeled himself to believe that everything would be back to normal today. Jason wouldn't need him. Rick would be quietly absent. Things would be happening, but none of them would involve him.

So it was a bit of a shock to push open the door of his office and find both Jason and Rick waiting for him.

"I thought we should take you up on that offer of being mediator," Jason said.

Mark started to agree, but noticed Rick's posture. Arms folded, expression closed. Jason had taken a step towards the door when Mark came in. Rick hadn't moved.

Mediators were supposed to be neutral. Rick knew how close he and Jason had been. It wasn't much of a leap to see that he considered this something he had to go along with because G-Force was more important than he was. Which, granted, it was. But that didn't mean he was worthless.

"Rick, do you want someone else here? Someone who knows what's going on? Who will see that you get a fair deal?"

Rick shook his head, but he couldn't meet Mark's eyes. Jason was frowning at the interchange, and Mark decided to push.

"Dimitri, maybe? Dylan? I think you need someone."

"Heck no!" This time the eyes did come up. "Keep them out of it!" He looked shocked at his own vehemence, and the voice calmed. "They don't know anything about it, and given that you'll want one of them to replace me I think we should keep it that way. But..."

"Who'd you talk to, Rick?" Jason's tone was mild.

"Don Wade."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Oh, _perfect_."

"I didn't do it to be perfect. I did it because I needed to tell someone who wasn't involved and I couldn't think of anyone else."

"You dumped your problems on Don. You didn't think he's got enough of his own?"

Rick snorted. "Actually, he seemed damn glad that someone was treating him as other than damaged goods for once. But since I'm not a complete idiot, he doesn't know who Mark is, so I'm not asking to bring him in on this. Look, forget it, okay. You've got my resignation. Write up whatever the hell excuse you want for why I quit and give it to me to sign."

Storming out had worked when Mark and Todd were the two other people involved. Jason beat Rick to the door easily. "Excuse? You think I make excuses?"

"Enough!" Mark had never needed to shout to get attention. That single word had every ounce of command presence he possessed behind it - and both men froze. "This is crazy. Rick, you go get Don, bring him to my quarters in Heron One. Jason and I will meet you there."

.

"Does it always turn into a slanging match?" he asked as they walked - well, Jason walked while he wheeled - down the concrete path towards the accommodation blocks. It had rained the night before, and with the continuous foot traffic there was a thin coating of mud on everything. Slippery wasn't an issue, but he simply hated continuously getting his gloves soaked and filthy, and there was no way round it.

"Pretty much." Jason wouldn't have noticed the mud. Probably wouldn't have noticed if the sky had turned yellow, truth be told. He was wearing that hard, rigid mask which showed no expression whatsoever, but in Mark's experience meant he was deeply unhappy.

He was acutely aware of his delicate situation here. He had no authority at all when it came to black section matters. Rick had already demonstrated that his temper was on a hair trigger. Jason's was no better. And now he was throwing Don Wade, ex G-Force second-in-command and known Spectran collaborator, into the mix.

"You're taking a big risk," Jason said abruptly. "Personally, I mean. Don's no fool. He may figure it out."

"If he does, he does. Rick already told him who he is. Do we trust him or does he need locking up?"

Jason flinched. "I trust him. But if I'm wrong and a squad of goons comes for me at the track, I can…you can't…"

"If a squad of goons can get into ISO, we've got worse problems than them knowing who I am."

They arrived at the door to Heron block. Jason opened it, and Mark wheeled inside and straight to the door of his quarters. He stripped his right glove off and fished in his pocket for his key, swiping it through the card reader before opening the door right-handed and wheeling his chair forward with his left hand, still gloved. The mat inside the door was long enough for a full rotation of the wheels, and that would get rid of the worst of the mud. Even so, he didn't want it all over the carpet.

"Jase? Pass me that frame?"

Jason stepped past him and retrieved the walking frame, holding it as if it might bite. At any other time Mark might have laughed. Now, he reached out for the hated thing and aligned it before standing up, most of his weight on his arms. He tried to ignore Jason's presence and concentrate on what he'd been told he needed to do: try to use his leg muscles instead of leaning forward and letting gravity do the work for him.

"You're moving better than you were yesterday," Jason said when he was most of the way to the chair at his desk.

 _That'll be because it's morning and I'm rested_. Mark didn't say it. Maybe Jason would start treating him like a human being again if he thought things were improving fast. But, now that he thought about it...perhaps it really was better? Just a bit? Was he taking longer steps than yesterday? Was there less weight on his arms and more on his legs?

Getting to the chair and sitting down was still a relief, and he'd barely pushed the frame behind him when there was a tap at the door. Jason strode over - five long strides, in place of his own fifty shuffles - and opened it. Rick's face was set hard. Alongside him, Don looked white and terrified. _Agoraphobia_ , Mark belatedly remembered.

Both glanced around as they came in, though Don was visibly avoiding the window and took the chair furthest from it before anyone else could. Jason stepped past him and sprawled on the bed, back against the wall. Anyone who didn't know him would probably have thought he looked casually relaxed. That left one chair for Rick: the easy chair in the corner which Mark never used because he couldn't get out of it. From Rick's expression, he hadn't been missing much. The tall pilot looked faintly ridiculous, and distinctly uncomfortable, as he lowered himself into a seat only a few inches from the floor.

And then two sets of eyes were on him, and Jason was looking anywhere but at him. Mark knew exactly what that expression meant. It was down to him.

"So, Rick. Have you reconsidered?"

"No." Flat, blunt, emotionless.

"Jason?"

"I won't send you out there to get killed."

"It's my job. If I can't do it with G-Force, I want to do it somewhere else."

"Slow down," Mark said, seeing this heading rapidly down the same dead-end route as their last conversation. "Jason, you need a fifth man. You always have, you always will. Specifically, you need a co-pilot. If not Rick - then who?"

"Let's just lose that 'if'," Rick said. "I've resigned. As far as I'm concerned, there are two questions we need to address. Where does Rick Shayler go next, and what do you want to say happened to the Kite?"

Jason snorted. "Rick Shayler is a Team Seven operative."

"Jason, that's not fair," Don said quietly. Jason glared, and he quailed, but carried on. "I'm supposed to be here to see Rick gets a fair outcome, right? Well, if he'd said no to joining G-Force in the first place he'd be on Team Three by now. If he's as good a pilot as he says, why waste it? Why shouldn't he go on Team Three?"

"Apart from because of the highly classified implant in the back of his neck?"

"What, like the one in mine, that Spectra spent a couple of years poking around in..." His voice trailed off, as he looked desperately at Mark, his hands clenched white and shaking. "Please tell me you have the clearance to know that."

 _Oh, yeah_. Mark just nodded, allowing himself a wry smile. If Don thought about it, it would be pretty obvious just how high his security clearance was. After all, he knew who the members of G-Force were.

"Anyhow." Don made a visible attempt to steady himself. "Is ISO so long on good fighter pilots they can throw one away, just because he wasn't cut out for G-Force? And what the hell else are you planning to do with him? Lock him up? Piss him off so bad he might even _want_ to go sell everything he knows? You may not have a use for him in birdstyle, but I can't believe you don't have a use for him in a plane."

 _A use for him in birdstyle_... Suddenly that part of the solution, at least, seemed so obvious Mark laughed out loud. How had they not seen it before? A pilot, a fighter, a leader, at least some experience even if he'd only been watching G-Force most of the time...

"I have a better idea," he said simply. "Rick, how do you feel about Force Two?"

Jason snapped his fingers, sitting forward cross-legged. "Bullseye."

Rick just stared, his mouth half open. Finally he said, "But I'm damaged goods. Why the hell would they want me?"

"Why the hell wouldn't they?"

"Well...you don't."

"There's all the difference in the world between joining an experienced team and going into a new one. I'd recommend you for that. Hell, I'll do it now." He lifted his left hand, and Mark realised that, in true Jason fashion, he really _was_ going to do it right now.

"Hold it, Jase. You know what Anderson will say. You need a fifth man."

"Well, they can't bump anyone from Force Two. I think we just made them a viable team."

Don cleared his throat. "Look, I don't know what's going on here...but I'm going to state the bleeding obvious anyway. It sounds to me like you need the Eagle back pretty darn bad. So drag him out of whatever super secret assignment he's on and tell him to get his rear end back in that front right chair."

There was a stunned, horrified silence...and then Jason swore and lifted his bracelet to his mouth, displaying the coloured sparkles of a bird scramble. "G-1, go."

"All members of G-Force to the Phoenix immediately," Anderson's voice said, and then there was the distinctive click of the line going dead.

Jason was at the door before he turned, and Mark belatedly realised Rick was still sitting in the chair, unmoving, wearing a bereft expression that he could so, _so_ empathise with. And, just for once, Jason said the right thing.

"You want to be on Force Two? Don't you think experience will help?" He dug in his pocket and held out a bracelet - presumably Rick had given it to him when he resigned.

Rick just sat there for a couple of seconds, and then he was on his feet, some of the tension gone. "Yes, Commander. I can take that seat for you if you want, since you're a man short."

Jason flipped him the bracelet, Rick caught it and fastened it on his wrist almost in one movement, and the two of them were out of the door before Mark could even wish them luck.

"Well...I'll be going, then," Don said awkwardly. "Dammit, Commander, I'd give anything at all to be able to say 'take me, I can come copilot for you'."

Mark very determinedly didn't react. Not at all. But Don still hesitated, obviously wanting to talk, and Mark regretfully returned to his day job, which included asking pertinent questions to make sure Donald Wade wasn't a security risk.

"I didn't know you were a pilot." Not strictly true - he knew which seat Don had sat in, and that he'd flown the G-1. But he'd mentally had the guy filed under 'scientist' in terms of what he loved and what he wanted to do.

"Were is the operative word." Don stood up, leaning one hand against the wall in a way clearly intended to look casual. It might even have worked, if his other hand hadn't been visibly trembling even tucked into his pocket. "The last plane I flew was the Phoenix. Right now? I couldn't go outside for long enough to even get close to one. Even if I did - sit a foot from a clear glass canopy and do anything except have hysterics? Yeah, I miss it, Commander. I miss it like hell. I'm never going to fly again - you needn't worry, I'm not going to vanish off with your new prototype. And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. But dammit, I thought at least the people who knew who I was would know what I used to be good at. Oh crap...I'm sorry..."

Mark sat and thought for a while after the door closed behind Don's hunched, unhappy figure. The guy was still a complete mess, that was apparent. Not after his place on G-Force back again, though. That was fortunate. Or unfortunate. It was becoming more apparent that Jason needed someone in that chair who could pull with the team. And Rick might be prepared to play 'not a team member, just observing' for a short while, but if he was to move to Force Two, he'd need to be training with them, not G-Force.

And they would still have to persuade the senior black section management that Rick should move to Force Two. Actually, Mark couldn't see that being too much of an issue, if they could come up with someone to take his place on G-Force. Requirements: experienced, capable, implanted, capable of working with Jason sufficient to take some of the stress off him and able to mesh with the rest of the team, and a pilot.

He could think round this as many times as he liked. Once Don was ruled out, there only was one candidate, and he wanted it so badly he could taste it. Couldn't this whole crisis have waited another month? Heck, even another week? He was nearly out of the chair, and it would be so much more plausible for him to go to Anderson on his own two feet. Even if he was still walking with a stick, or even crutches.

The situation couldn't wait a month, that seemed evident. But could it wait a week? And could he, somehow, do a month's recovery in a week? Maybe he could. Just maybe.

Team Seven could do without him this morning. Mark pulled the frame round and stood up, worrying more about speed than form as he headed for his chair. Time for a trip to black section.


	6. Chapter 6

"Mark! Good to see you again." Chris Johnson, was, as Mark had expected, in black section medical - G-Force was out, and that meant their team doctor would be at hand. "Thanks for stepping in yesterday - that was a good solution you came up with."

"I'm glad," he answered absently.

"I think it's now under control. But that wasn't what you came about, was it?"

Mark glanced up towards the other end of the big main room, where a second doctor was sitting at a computer. Chris took the hint.

"Come into my office."

Mark entered reluctantly. He didn't like this room, associated as it was with everything going wrong for him. In here, he'd admitted to his problems for the first time. In here, Chris had told him that he was fine. He hadn't been fine.

Chris sat down behind the desk, and Mark pushed the memories way down. Just for once, he didn't make the effort to transfer into the chair tucked against the desk on the visitor's side of the office, instead pushing the wheelchair close. In the past year, every time he'd sat in that chair the outcome had been bad.

"So, Mark, what can I do for you?"

He'd thought out his arguments on the way here, and abruptly they all seemed entirely inadequate. They were still all he had.

"You said my implant could be repaired, once I had normal movement back. That would be now."

Chris was very visibly taken aback, and took several seconds to reply. "That was months ago, Mark. To be brutally honest, that was before your muscles wasted almost to nothing. Right now you need to get fit again. Normally."

"That's going to take months."

"Yes, I'm afraid it is. It took nine months -"

"Heard it before. Nine months to get to this state, nine months to get back to where I was. Nearer ten, now. I could get there faster with the implant, Chris."

Chris just looked at him, and Mark realised how it must sound.

"No, I'm not looking for an easy answer! I'm looking for something to help me push myself harder. Right now I get tired so fast it's useless. I can't build leg muscle thirty seconds at a time! A bit of backup from the implant and I could make that time a minute, maybe two. Work harder, build more muscle faster. Positive feedback."

The doctor nodded, but it was the sort of nod which, if Mark had seen if from someone he'd been intimidating in birdstyle, he'd have followed up with picking the man straight up by the collar for a bit of reinforcement. "I'll need to discuss it with Mike Bennett."

"Of course you will. I'd like to talk to him too. Can we get him in here now?"

"I'm afraid not. He's not around at the moment. I think he's at a seminar abroad somewhere."

 _Crap_. Mark's determination deflated. He couldn't persuade an implant expert who simply wasn't here.

"Look, Mark, leave this with me. I'll speak to Mike as soon as he's available. I'm sure he'll want to talk with you about it. But right now the best thing you can do -"

"Is carry on getting fit by myself. I know. Thanks, Chris."

.

He headed back down the corridor towards the main elevators considering his next move. Leave it to Chris? Chris didn't know what his urgency was, and had no particular reason to speak to Mike Bennett the moment he got back. And Mark felt that days mattered, here. No, he'd go back to his Team Seven office and leave a message for Mike to contact him urgently. He could make his own appointment to speak with the only man he wanted anywhere near the inside of what was left of the chip on his neck, and send Mike to speak with Chris afterwards. How long could a seminar last, anyway? Surely not longer than a few days. Maybe it would be on Mike's voicemail, or his email autoreply.

He was just signing out, at the guardpost next to the elevators, when one of them pinged its arrival and the occupants came over to wait behind him.

"Hey, Dean," the captain manning the guardpost said to the tall security officer leaning on the counter.

"Morning. Permit for Wade. Armed accompanied only, the usual."

Mark handed his own badge back over and spun his chair round, to find himself facing Don. He was guarded by a further security officer, holding a gun in the small of his back.

"Don? What happened?"

"Nothing, Commander." His voice was flat, calm, and still nervous. Mark could appreciate the combination, from someone not wanting his guard to get the wrong idea. "My implant doesn't stay in tune like it should after what Spectra did to it. When it slips, I call Dr Bennett and I get escorted in here for him to fix it."

Mark frowned. "Mike's out of the country."

"You're mistaken. I just spoke to him." Wade looked puzzled, as did his guards.

"You..." Mark stopped, putting the pieces together. He'd been had, pure and simple. He spun the chair round so fast he almost tipped it over and headed back the way he'd come, ignoring the shout from the guardpost. He didn't even stop for the swinging doors at the entrance to Medical, instead slamming through them.

"What the -" came from the other doctor. Mark still didn't stop, hitting the door to Chris's office hard enough to dent it before he caught the handle, threw it open, and went right in.

Chris's guilty expression, caught phone in hand, said it all.

"Abroad, is he? What the hell is going on here, Chris? Need to get your story straight before you tell me why I can't be fixed?"

"It really isn't like that, Mark. You need to -"

"Don't you dare tell me what I need to do! I know what I need to do! I need to talk to you and to Mike, and you are going out of your way to try to stop me! What -"

He stopped at the sensation of cold steel, just under and behind his right ear. Just barely stopped himself from his instinctive reaction: to twist round and take the gun away before any unimplanted human could pull the trigger. That didn't work so well when he himself might as well have been unimplanted. He settled for Plan B.

"Take that thing away. _Now_."

"Doctor?" the guard asked.

"He's angry, Sergeant, not dangerous. Put the gun away."

The barrel moved away, and Mark swung round to fix the man with a furious glare. "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, sir. You're someone who just burst in here without a badge despite being ordered to stop. We only didn't shoot because we'd seen you hand the badge in." He was entirely unapologetic - a security guard in the same mould as Todd Sanderson. Tall, well-built, early thirties, crew cut, not a high-flyer in terms of rank. Mark would have put a considerable sum of money on him also being a black belt in multiple martial arts, a crack shot, no idiot, and with plenty of active service experience. Probably a decorated veteran. Certainly he'd done everything right just now. Mark hadn't heard him coming - not that he'd been listening - and he was now standing out of Mark's reach. He'd holstered the weapon, but his hand was still on it. And no, he quite evidently didn't have the faintest idea who Mark was.

"He's Commander Jarrald, Sergeant," Chris said. "Does that mean anything to you?"

The hand didn't leave the gun, though the jaw dropped visibly. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Consider it an exercise," Mark said, keeping his voice calm with an effort. "Now get out."

The man still glanced at Chris, who nodded. Only then did he leave, shutting the door quietly behind him.

"You'll be wanting to know why I lied to you," Chris said quietly.

His initial fury spent, Mark didn't trust his voice. He simply kept looking steadily ahead.

"I have no idea how your body will react to the stimulus of the implant after this long without it. I wanted to discuss it with Mike in private first. Five minutes, while you got back to your quarters, that's all I needed. You'd have known he wasn't away the moment you tried to leave him a message."

"I don't need protecting from the truth." Despite his effort to sound mature and in control, it came out with more petulance than he'd intended. Not as much anger as he felt.

The doctor looked down, straightening an already neat pile of paperwork on his desk. "Maybe not. But I couldn't give you false hope again. I wanted Mike to do his research, and to be as sure as he could be, before he discussed best case scenarios with you. I've already let you down too many times."

"Fine. So let me tell you what's going to happen now. Mike's fixing Don Wade, Don says. That'll take how long - half an hour? After that, you and me and him are going to sit down and we're going to discuss the options. All of them. The good ones and the bad ones and the chances of them going right or wrong. I've said this before, Chris, and I'm not going to say it again. _I am not a child_. I can make the hard calls. I've proved that. I've made them for my whole team. I've made them for cities. I've made them for planets. You will let me make them for myself."

Chris's eyes came up, and he nodded. "Yes, Commander. Shall I call you when Mike's finished?"

"I'll wait."

.

He could probably have intimidated Chris into giving him access to one of the medical department's computers, but he decided he'd been quite intimidating enough for one afternoon. Instead, he wheeled his chair into one of the window alcoves, pulled his handheld out, and scrolled unenthusiastically through a long list of new emails. He was finding it increasingly difficult to care about whether Dave O'Leary should be on an intensive remedial flight course or basic training yet again; whether Shih Quan's English was good enough for him to be excused from the non-native speakers' course; whether Callen James should be recommended for Spectran immersion. Two of the new Academy graduates were under consideration for fighter jet training and fast-track to Team Three, and the lump in his throat rose again. How long was it going to take him to get to the point of having a flight clearance again? He'd have loved to be able to reply 'I'll evaluate them' and just go out and do it. Put the kids in a plane and see whether they had what it took or not. That would be so much more efficient than all this second-hand looking at endless records and test scores and reports by basic level flight instructors.

He managed to lose himself in the work somewhat, by using his old trick of telling himself it had to be done; the safety of the galaxy depended on him doing it quickly and accurately. He'd done paperwork on this basis for years. Sometimes it had even been true. This time he knew it wasn't, and he was distracted every time a door opened or someone walked past him. He'd have liked to believe he was just being alert, but he knew it wasn't true. He was nervous as hell about what Mike Bennett would have to say, and about making the right decision. No matter what he'd said to Chris, making a hard call was very different when you knew that the consequences were personal.

"Mark? Chris says you want to talk?"

He jumped about ten feet in the air. Of course, the time the person approaching was the one he wanted was the one time he'd failed to notice him. Mike Bennett was half way across the room towards him, with Chris hovering at his office door. Over to his left, two armed guards were escorting Don Wade away.

"Doctor. Can I have ten minutes of your time?"

.

"I haven't discussed this with Mike at all," was the first thing Chris said, sitting down after carefully rearranging the chairs in his office such that all three of them fitted and the door would close.

 _Good_. "Then I guess I'll get an honest reaction," Mark said. "Mike, I want you to repair my implant. Can you do that?"

The implant specialist glanced at Chris. Back at Mark, concern in his eyes. He took a breath and let it out again. Then he frowned and rubbed at his forehead with one hand. "I wish you'd given me time to think about this."

"I don't want the polished answer. I want to know what the issues are."

"Oo...kay. How much do you remember about what went wrong before?"

 _Every last damned word you ever told me, replayed over and over_... "I'll tell you when you lose me."

"Fine. Well, I think it's most unlikely you'd reject it - all the new circuitry will be entirely internal. I can't guarantee that you'll be able to access it, since you never had conscious control before. And there has to be some risk that playing with your neural functions will make you regress."

"Paralyse me again?" Mark went cold.

Mike raised his eyebrows. "You wanted to know the issues. I don't think that one is a major risk. But then I didn't last time, either. At this point I can't rule it out completely."

"Anything else?"

"Well, it's an operation a few millimetres from your spinal cord. Standard risks for infection and damage."

"When could you do it?"

"When do you want it? We'd need a surgical slot, but that doesn't need a lot of notice. I've had the components ready ever since..." His voice trailed off, as his hands tightened on the arms of the chair.

 _Since you planned to put me back together again a week after my first op_. Mark nodded. "Can you get me more detailed stats on the outcomes, or is this as good as it gets?"

"We don't exactly have a lot of prior cases. I don't think it would make things any worse and I think there's a reasonable chance you'd get at least some access to the functionality. I have no idea what, or how complete."

"Mark, where's this come from?" Chris asked quietly. "What's the big hurry?"

"You don't think waiting nine months is long enough?"

"I'm concerned you may be after a quick fix. You've been through rehab before. You don't need me to tell you it can't be rushed."

"It can be speeded up, though." Mark tried not to look pleading, the memory of that morning's frustrating session burnt on his mind. "How can I build muscle if I'm exhausted after three minutes of leg exercises? How can I get my balance back if I can't stand for more than thirty seconds? How can I learn to walk again when I can't support my weight on one leg yet?"

"Slowly, and steadily, and patiently. Even a fully working implant wouldn't change that."

"No, but maybe it would give me five minutes of exercises instead of three. A minute standing at a time. I know using it like that would flatten me. I can handle sleeping twelve hours a day and wanting to die I'm so exhausted." He caught and held Chris's eyes. "I can't handle being so feeble I can't even start to push myself."

Chris nodded slowly. "Can you leave it with us to sort out the details?"

"How long?"

"Barring major distractions, I'll call you tomorrow."

 _Major distractions_... Mark considered the orange lights, still on to indicate a mission in progress, and abruptly felt ashamed. G-Force was out there fighting, and he was wailing about having his implant fixed. A major distraction, as seen by the head of black section medical, would be one of them coming back badly hurt.

"Do you know where they've gone?" he asked.

Mike Bennett shrugged.

"Interstellar," Chris said. "That's all I know. I'm sure Control would tell you more?"

Mark grimaced at the thought. He'd survived the past few months by not knowing what was going on. Hiding his head in the sand, maybe - but it was so much easier not to stress about what G-Force was going through when he didn't know until it was all over. Go into Control, now, to the possibility of disaster which he could do nothing to avert?

"No, thanks. I'll leave the controllers to it."

* * *

"I wish you'd brought Samuels in on that," Mike Bennett said, having left enough time for Mark to get out of earshot and then some.

Chris sighed. "So do I. No way he'd have let me haul in a shrink, though. He doesn't want anyone asking what's really going on. There's no way in hell this is because he doesn't want to take his time in rehab."

"So what is it about?"

"I wish I knew. But he's certainly been a lot more involved with Jason recently. I thought he might go into Control for a moment then, which is what Anderson and Ivanov have wanted him to do all along - but he always did hate watching from the sidelines."

"He can't want to come back. Surely not."

 _Oh, good grief, if only_ … Chris was still reeling from the last meeting he'd had with Anderson and Samuels. From the psychiatrist's certainty that it wasn't a question of whether Jason would stop coping, it was a question of when. That they needed, as a matter of urgency, to start thinking about who would command G-Force next.

Bennett didn't know any of this, and didn't need to. And, in any case, the last thing anyone needed was to start fantasizing about getting the Eagle back in command of G-Force any time soon. It would be all too easy to use it to avoid thinking about the hard decisions they needed to make. The man could barely stand up. Mark wasn't a viable candidate for G-Force, any more than Don Wade was. This conversation needed to be redirected.

"I'm thinking he's heard about those remote controlled fighter planes. He'd be one hell of a pilot for them. Squadron leader, maybe. It wouldn't be G-Force, but it would be pretty darn close to active service. Probably as close as he'll get."

Bennett raised his eyebrows. "I hadn't thought of that. It would suit him, wouldn't it? But why wouldn't he just say so?"

"Can you guarantee he'll get that particular implant functionality back? The hardware link?"

"I can't guarantee anything." The sigh was especially deep.

Bennett stood up and crossed to the window, staring out into the distance, and Chris left him to his thoughts and went back to reviewing medical records. The new fighter planes should cut down on the horrendous losses that ISO's squadrons had been taking - but they needed implanted personnel, and that had been a problem all along. Not the same magnitude of problem that they'd had finding Force Two personnel, since there was no requirement for the candidates to be able to handle jump - but they still needed to be implanted before the end of puberty, and that meant Academy kids, not established pilots. The scary thing was that these days many of their established pilots were the same age as Academy kids. He had an entire page of records here for people who had been injured on active service and would never fly a plane again…and were still young enough to be considered as implantation candidates.

And here he was, with five available implants, a couple of dozen damaged, unhappy young ISO officers who desperately wanted them, and Mark wanting to jump the queue, or at least, reclaim the tray of technology which had been earmarked for him originally. And deserving of it, surely? What if he did say no and tell him he'd have to wait his turn? What effect would that have on the rest of G-Force? Even the possibility that it would make them think twice about their treatment should they get hurt was too much of a risk. No, if Mark wanted his implant mended, Mark would get it. One of the others would have to wait. Mike might not be able to guarantee that Mark would get his hardware link back, but then he couldn't guarantee that a new implantee would get it either. And it wasn't like any of the names on his screen were candidates to be birdstyle operatives.

Bennett turned back after a couple of minutes, eyes on Chris, clearly wanting to share something more than standard pleasantries, and Chris blanked the computer screen and gave the other his full attention.

"I'm worried about this. I don't like using the Eagle as my test subject. What if I screw him up even worse?"

"That has to be his call. It's not like we have someone else we can operate on first."

Bennett's hands clenched nervously. "There's Don Wade."

"You know we'll never get the clearance to upgrade Wade's implant. He's the security risk from hell."

"He's uncomfortable and miserable, and I can't keep his implant in tune any more. It's fried, Chris. Maybe not as fried as Mark's was, but still fried, and getting worse by the day. He's terrified of needles. He comes in here when he can't face how bad he feels any more, at gunpoint, and I strap him down and torture him. It was bad enough when I was doing it once a month. I've done it three times this week, twice in the last two days. It's cruel. We're supposed to be better than them. Right now? If that was me, and someone told me they could fix my chip, I'd tell them anything they wanted to know. That's a far bigger security risk, if you ask me."

He let out a ragged breath as Chris regarded him in astonishment. He'd known Don was a mess. Known, too, that his implant had been badly abused, and that Mike had had a few tries at retuning it. And of course that could only be done in black section, and there was no way that Wade, a self-confessed Spectran collaborator, would be allowed in without an armed guard.

Chris hadn't appreciated that Wade's implant was damaged. As his doctor, he probably should have guessed, and was a little surprised that Wade hadn't mentioned it to him - but he could appreciate that the very last thing Don wanted was anyone else poking and prodding him in that area. That was, after all, what the Spectrans had done. And that put a whole new light on it. If Wade needed his implant fixing for _medical_ reasons, then suddenly Chris's priorities had to change. He was Don's doctor. It was his job to see that Don got the medical treatment he needed.

"Do you think you can fix it?" he asked.

Bennett grimaced, and Chris had the impression that he was making an effort not to pace. "I can try. If we operate and open the chip up, I can disable the power source. At the very least, that should stop the discomfort. But...I'd rather have a real try at fixing it properly. Personally I think the kid's suffered enough, and what the hell does it matter if theoretically he could fire a jump-drive? Let him keep his reflexes and his coordination; he's already lost everything else that ever mattered to him. I never said it before, because Grant would probably have locked me up. But if we presented it as a useful precursor to fixing Mark? Without Grant, Anderson and Ivanov might go for it."

Chris thought rapidly. " _Is_ it a useful precursor to fixing Mark? The problems aren't the same. The implants aren't the same model, either. Sympathy only goes so far – that's a few hundred thousand dollars of electronics you're talking about putting in the back of his neck, in the full knowledge that he'll never use it. When we have people waiting who may well use it." He indicated his computer. "If you use a chip on Wade, that's one fewer candidate for Team Eight, in the near future at least. And we really do need those remote control planes in action sooner rather than later. I was looking at implanting five potential remote pilots, and now we're talking about reducing that to three. Four, with Mark. If that's what Mark's intending to do. It's not like we can make him."

"I think demonstrating that we can make major repairs to a chip after the implantation window has closed is well worth doing in its own right." Bennett grinned. "Imagine if we implanted a blank chip in every Academy kid at entry, and put the expensive internals in later for the ones who made the grade at eighteen or twenty. It could fix the whole problem of needing to use kids. That would be huge."

He turned hopeful eyes on Chris. "But I think we should do it quite apart from that, and now. Mark gets fixed when he ran away from his responsibilities, and Don doesn't when he did nothing wrong except to get caught and tortured? That's beyond wrong, but it is what Grant will do. You know it is. But Grant isn't part of the decision-making process at the moment. If we get in there quickly, _now_ , Don might get some sympathy and fair treatment. I hate to wish ill of anyone, but if we wait until Grant's back to use his veto, the kid's going to be in hell forever."

Chris thought desperately. On one hand he agreed. On the other hand...

The other hand wasn't his problem, he decided. The other hand was the security staff's problem, and he was much happier with that being Anderson's call than Grant's. Medically, emotionally, physically, he had to agree with Mike. He disliked the ethics of operating on the more disposable man first, or of rushing the decision based on someone else's illness, but that was just too bad. One of them _had_ to be first, if either of them was ever to have the implant repair they needed. And Chris was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to live with himself if Grant came back on duty and persuaded the other senior decision-makers that neither of them needed it.

"Right," he said. "We will need to move fast. Grant's going to be fit for duty again within days, and that's something I am not prepared to manipulate – I'm his doctor too. I won't harm one of my patients, even to benefit another. Let's see what Anderson and Ivanov think while they're still the only ones making the decision."

He turned back to his computer, and, feeling sick, returned the bottom two names on his list of final implantation candidates to the waiting list. The only consolation was that they'd never know how close they'd come.


	7. Chapter 7

"Where have you been?" was the first thing out of his supervisor's mouth as Don hurried into the lab, fastening up his white lab coat.

"Sorry. I had to go see the doctor." _Had to_ was an understatement. Stress had always triggered the discomfort from his implant, and being thrown into a decidedly edgy needle match between Jason and Rick had qualified - even without the requirement to go outside to get to Mark's quarters. Had Rick mentioned that, he'd have refused. Getting there had taken everything he had. Getting back had involved five minutes of leaning against the wall in the lobby of the accommodation block, eyes shut, running through every relaxation technique he knew and reminding himself over and over that Lieutenant Commander Jarrald was the man who held his future at Team Seven in his hands. He'd not get any sort of clearance to do anything if he couldn't demonstrate basic psychological fitness.

That had encouraged him out of the door and along the twenty yards of path to the main building, and then he'd collapsed against the wall and gasped, as the prickling misery of feedback from his implant trickled remorselessly out from the nape of his neck, up into his skull and down into his shoulders. It destroyed his concentration, it made him feel utterly wretched, and it _hurt_. The only thing which helped was getting Bennett to retune the implant yet again. Initially he'd been fine for several weeks, but he was having to ask for it to be done more and more frequently. The last time was only a couple of days ago. He suspected he needed a more permanent solution, and was too afraid to ask if there even was one. Not because he didn't think there was, but because he didn't know if they'd consider him worthy of it.

"Tell me next time, okay?"

"Yes. Sorry." Don headed to the back of the lab, to the bench he'd been assigned. He suspected it was considered the least desirable one, as it had no outdoor view whatsoever, but that suited him just fine. Its proximity to the fume cupboard was less desirable. He could live with it, though. It was his own little bit of freedom; a tiny fragment of his old life back. If only they'd give him something halfway useful to do.

He fired up the ancient computer they'd allocated him and pulled up his test notes. He had to admit that this Spectran luminous paint was clever. Very clever. Somehow, they had produced something with all the brightness of a fluorescent but which behaved like a phosphorescent in glowing - well, shining - well after the light source was turned off. A significant amount of energy was being stored, and so far every test he'd tried had failed to give any explanation. It had to be nuclear, he was starting to think, and thus not his field at all, and he was reluctant to admit it. No way they'd let him keep the project, not if it required experimentation at the nuclear level, and what they gave him next might be even less useful.

So...the mass spectrometer had shown him nothing. In addition, it wasn't radioactive. Even he was allowed to use a Geiger counter. It wasn't associated with different isotopes. But there was something storing that energy and then releasing, it, and maybe it would have different reaction rates. If he could just devise something which would be highly sensitive to exactly the right docking sites...

When the phone rang, he jumped so hard his chest hurt, and he had to take a moment to get control of himself before he could pick up the receiver. By then, of course, the other three scientists in the lab were staring at him, wondering why he was letting the phone ring and disturb them all. Don swallowed desperately and fought for control, and won.

"Wade here."

"Don, it's Chris. Can you come and see me, please? Right away would be good."

Don glanced around. The senior researcher was looking pointedly at his watch.

"I...I already missed the start of work today. Can I come later?"

"Now would be better." There was a pause. "Is your supervisor there?"

"Uh...yes..." He hit the mute button. "Sergei? I'm sorry...can you come speak with Dr Johnson?"

He couldn't tell if the older man's expression was understanding or frustrated, as Sergei put his paper down and came over to Don's desk. "Romanov here - may I help you?"

Don could hear the tone of voice, but not the words - Sergei had the receiver clamped tight to his ear - and the biochemist's expression gave nothing away. The one-sided conversation seemed to go on for a long time. Don didn't know where to look or what to do, and had started to walk away when Sergei finally spoke.

"Of course, Doctor." The phone went down and he turned to Don. "You have friends in high places, Mr Wade."

"I didn't ask him to do that." Don gulped and looked at the floor. "I do want to be here, Sergei. I _really_ want to be here."

And, to his surprise, when he glanced up there was the hint of a reassuring smile. "I know that. Go get better, Don. You're a good chemist - you know that? I can use good chemists, any day. But not ones who need medical treatment. I will see you when you feel better."

.

The black section guards were waiting for him when he got to the room opposite the elevator to black section. The same two as earlier this morning, with the same attitude. He was something sub-human; a waste of their time. They never tried to talk to him, and he'd never dared speak to them. He knew how ISO operatives felt about Spectran traitors, and he couldn't blame them. But he had no desire to get shot because someone 'thought' he was trying to do something beyond put one foot in front of the other.

The taller one - Joe, his name was - pulled out the handcuffs and Don held out his wrists obediently, not making eye contact. He flinched slightly as they clicked shut. They were, as always, so tight he could barely move his wrists inside them, and his skin was still sore from where they'd rubbed him earlier. He told himself it was temporary. Whatever Chris wanted, it wouldn't take long. Would it? Sergei had implied that he didn't expect to see him for a while, and Don really didn't fancy a long period in black section chained to a bed. Or worse: in the cells below. He'd spent time down there. He never, ever wanted to go back.

This couldn't be a ruse - could it? Nothing medical at all? Just a trouble-free way to get him back into black section so they could lock him up for good? He didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but had he failed some test? Something associated with this morning? Had Rick telling him who he was tipped the balance and made him too much of a security threat to be given any freedom at all? Or was it that he'd applied to Team Seven and overstepped his bounds that way?

"Walk," the senior of his two guards - Dean - said, and Don stumbled towards the door and the elevator beyond, sick, cold fear growing in his stomach. This might be the end of his freedom, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

The duty officer at the black section guardpost looked somewhat surprised to see him again, but didn't comment as she issued him with the normal locator bracelet snapped round his left wrist just above the cuffs and warned him that without it - or with it, but without his guards - he would be shot on sight. He just nodded in acknowledgement. He'd heard it all before.

And then they guided him in the wrong direction, left instead of right from the entrance lobby, and he couldn't do it at all. Couldn't move. The world went white and then black, and all the cursing and prodding in the world couldn't make him move. He didn't know how long he lay on the floor, curled in a fetal ball, but eventually there was a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Don, talk to me."

He didn't respond, not then or for a while, but the voice was calm and insistent, and eventually he managed to choke out, "Don't lock me up again!"

"Lock you up? Don, nobody's going to lock you up. Come on, son, have I ever lied to you?"

He belatedly processed the voice as being Chris Johnson. And no, the doctor never had lied to him, and was one of the people who had got him out of that hideous underground cell. Don forced himself to open his eyes and uncurl, just a bit.

"Come on. We need to talk to you about your implant. There's no question of locking you up. Now, can you cope?"

And he found that he could.

.

He hadn't been in this briefing room for a very long time - in fact he was fairly sure that the last time he'd been in here he'd been in birdstyle. Had it been Anderson and G-Force in here, he suspected he'd have lost it completely. But no, it was Mike Bennett, an older, greying man with a cropped beard, another one of similar age but clean-shaven, and a tall, well-built young man in brown and cream birdstyle.

"Take the cuffs off him," the bearded man ordered with a strong Russian accent, and Dean's eyes widened.

"Colonel?"

"Now, please, Captain. The Osprey should be sufficient for our safety, do you not agree?"

Both guards and Don glanced towards the birdstyled figure, who smiled and ostentatiously dropped his right hand onto the gun holstered at his side. He'd never heard of the Osprey. He hadn't realised they had anyone beyond G-Force in birdstyle. This must be one of the people intended for the new Force Two, he supposed. They must be closer to ready than he'd appreciated, given the way Jason talked about them.

Dean's expression showed what he thought of the situation, but like any good little soldier, he didn't argue. Instead he pulled out the key to the cuffs, and carefully approached Don so as not to impede the Osprey's line of fire. Don tried not to care, holding his hands out as helpfully as he could, and murmuring "Thank you" as they were removed. He'd spent years picking his battles. Having your jailer not hate you personally was important.

Dean and Joe left, shutting the door behind them with a quiet click, and Don swallowed hard. _Be competent. Cope. Show I'm a reliable human being and not a disaster waiting to happen._ It would have been more believable if his voice hadn't cracked across two octaves the moment he tried to speak, and Chris Johnson's face twisted in what Don desperately hoped was sympathy.

"Since you seem to be putting two and two together and making about fifteen, let's get right to the point. Don, we think your implant is damaged. It's not staying in tune like it should, and it seems to be getting worse rapidly. Is that right?"

"Yes," he managed.

Mike Bennett nodded, glancing sideways at the other men at the table, and Don belatedly recognised the clean-shaven man. He was a psychologist, he thought. He'd talked to Don - well, at him - early on, when Chris had got him out of the cells and all he'd been able to do was curl on the bed and whimper. And the bearded man was a colonel. So, the doctor, the shrink, the implant engineer and the military guy. Plus muscle in the corner, in case he should decide to try to kill some of the only people who apparently cared that he was still alive.

"I think I can fix it," Bennett said. "But I will need to open it up and replace most if not all of the internals."

Don gulped despite himself, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the Osprey flinch. Not a nice idea at all.

"Can you not just remove them?" the colonel asked. "Mr Wade hardly needs implant enhancements."

He shut his eyes. Take everything away. Not that he had much that was useful - good coordination, good hearing, the ability to read a newspaper from across the room. But he didn't want to lose them. Abruptly aware that he was missing any visual signals being passed between the men sitting in judgment on his future, he opened his eyes again.

Bennett nodded. "Sure I can. But I'll be blunt. I have the chance to see if I can fix a damaged implant properly, in a situation where if I can't it isn't the end of the world because we're not going to let Don use any of the major abilities anyway. That experience could make all the difference in the world to someone else. Someone who needs the functionality back."

"You want to use me as a guinea pig?" The words were out before he could stop himself.

Bennett met his eyes. "Yes, I do. You keep telling me how you want to do something useful. Here's something useful you can do, that nobody else can. I won't do it unless you agree...but I don't see what you have to lose. As Colonel Ivanov so neatly pointed out, the obvious solution is to remove the internal circuitry completely. Nobody's going to agree to me giving you a real working implant again unless it's useful to ISO."

 _And you've been vocal about wanting to be useful. Nice one, Don. Talk about painting yourself into a corner_. He wanted this, though. Wanted it badly enough to agree, even if it was as practice for someone else's operation. Someone trustworthy, doubtless. Someone they actually _wanted_ back. Someone...

Someone who might be in a wheelchair at the moment, maybe? Someone with black section clearances? Someone who appeared to be a very similar age to the current members of G-Force? Someone who the commander of G-Force trusted enough to bring him in on personnel issues? Someone who, that very morning, had been in black section trying to see Mike Bennett?

And someone who held Don's future in his hands. Well, if he was right, that left him with very few options. The Eagle had made it very clear what he thought of Don Wade, traitor. Would he feel differently enough to give him a security clearance in his alter ego of Lieutenant Commander Jarrald of Team Seven? It didn't seem likely. But fate had given Don a bargaining chip here. Just one. He sat up straight, looking round the men behind the table, trying to give the impression of confidence.

"You want to use me as your alpha patient? I'll cooperate. But there are conditions."

"I don't think you're in any position to be making demands," Ivanov said.

"No, I'm not." Don looked desperately around the room again, wanting support and sympathy, but knowing he wouldn't get any. It didn't matter. Nobody was ever going to give him anything for free again. He had to demand it or accept that he'd never have it.

"You can strap me down and poke around in my implant. You can make me answer questions at gunpoint. You can do what the hell you like, and we both know you can make me comply in about ten minutes if you try. Maybe less. But if you do those things you're no better than Spectra. I think you are better than them. I also think you have more sense than to throw away my goodwill. Because, believe it or not, you have it. I want to help you. I really do. But I do have some conditions."

"Name them," Ivanov said, his deep voice impassive.

"No more chains and gunpoint guards in black section. I want a proper clearance to be in here. I want a proper rank, and that position on Team Seven which I applied for, no strings attached. And, if fixing my implant works? I...I want a chance to use it. Even if it is only in training."

"Nobody here can authorise that, Don," said Chris Johnson.

"I know." What had he expected - for them to agree? The moment it was out of his mouth he'd felt a complete idiot. That last thing, he should have kept to himself, forever. He had no idea why or how it had come out.

"I think maybe Don should come and talk to me about this," Samuels said. That was all he said, and Don's eyes dropped. Samuels knew he hadn't meant to say that, no question. Whether it was the drugs talking, or the stress, or just his screwed-up brain, didn't really matter. He'd opened up in a way he'd spent years not doing, admitted that there was still something which mattered to him, and now they had a lever they were going to grill him all over again for everything they thought he hadn't told them...

He wasn't aware of when the world went white, or when he toppled sideways off the chair. Missed Ivanov's most uncharacteristic burst of profanity, and the Osprey catching him before he hit the floor. Missed, too, the young man glancing up at the four decision-makers behind the table.

"If someone told me I could never use my implant again? Never transmute? Never fly? I think I would be most unhappy, too."

* * *

Don woke up face down and stiff, and for one terrifying moment he was back in Spectran captivity after a session of having his implant probed. But Spectran cells never had sheets on the bed, or comfortable mattresses, and he didn't hurt the way he always had. Memory returned, and he opened his eyes warily, wondering why it wasn't carpet he was lying on.

Green eyes met his, and there was a nervous smile, before Princess spoke into her bracelet. "Chris, he's awake." She returned her attention to him. "How do you feel?"

"Like an idiot. Princess, I...it's good to see you again. Real good." He went to roll over, intending to sit up, but every muscle protested and he collapsed back to face down and flat. "How long was I out?"

"It's good to see you too, Don." She put a gentle hand out and squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I should have come sooner. Much sooner."

"You didn't miss much. I'm not exactly the man I used to be." His breath caught, as more memory flooded back, of what he'd said. Of his stupid, pointless attempt to manipulate ISO senior brass, when they'd actually offered to fix his implant. "Not likely to be, either. Is that what you came to tell me? That it only took them more than thirty seconds to say no because they were laughing so hard? I guess I should be glad I didn't wake up in a cell."

She grimaced, glancing round the room in an obvious attempt to avoid looking at him. "You nearly did wake up in a cell, except that Jason screamed blue murder about it and said G-Force would do the guarding. They were worried that something was going on. That you keeling over then and there was a ploy."

Don snorted. "If I wanted to blow up ISO, I could have done it fifty times over already. Even though all I'm allowed access to is high school chemistry lab stuff."

"You might not have known. You could have been conditioned. Mike thought that the trigger might well have been the threat of having your implant rebuilt - that maybe they'd put some programming in there."

Don felt sick. Beyond sick. They'd found _another_ reason not to trust him? One he couldn't possibly disprove...ever? He'd accepted that he was a liability, but to be told he was a walking time bomb? That hurt. That hurt a lot. He twisted his face into the pillow, eyes shut, fighting desperately for control.

"I think I made things worse," Princess said shakily as he heard the door click open. "Chris...just tell him. I thought I should tell him everything in order, but..." There was a sob, and the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps before the door clicked shut again.

The next sob was his own, only partly muffled by the pillow, and then the hand on his shoulder was larger and heavier.

"It's not as bad as you think, Don. Things are going to be okay. Come on, talk to me."

He turned his head so he could breathe properly again, but kept his eyes shut. "You'll never trust me again. You think they brainwashed me. That there's some trigger in my implant."

Chris's voice was calm. "We suspected that, yes. We still don't know if it was true, and we may not for a while until our analysis is complete. But, on balance, Ivanov and Anderson decided the only safe course of action was for Mike to fix your implant. Leaving it wasn't an option any more for the sake of your health, and trying to disable it was likely to have been predicted and could have been the trigger. I'm sorry we didn't wake you up and get your permission, but we decided we couldn't take the risk. If there was a trigger, it isn't in there any more. Your implant's had a complete internal rebuild; we've kept you unconscious for three days."

 _Three days_... That made sense. That would explain the stiffness and shakiness, in a way that he was much happier with than that it was all psychosomatic. And...they'd fixed it? He felt nervously for his implant controls. It had been a long time since doing so did anything other than make him want to throw up.

It was there, and it was responding to him...and it was _different_. He pulled sharply away from the mental contact, twisting to look up at the doctor.

"What did you do to it?"

"We upgraded it to the latest specs. I'm sorry; yes, we did it at least partly as a trial for another patient. It was the only way it would ever have been authorised. If that offends you, I'm sure Mike can disable it again."

"That won't be necessary." He tried to keep his voice level, to pretend it didn't matter to him, but he could hear how badly he was failing. There was no way to hide it, none at all. What they'd done to his implant? There was _power_ there. Now what G-Force could do made a lot more sense. Speed and strength were right there, and all he wanted was to go test them.

"So," Chris said, "what you wanted was a chance to use the upgrades we put in. You got it, as soon as you feel up to it. We would very much like to know how much of the functionality you can use, as effectively a second implantee several years after the normal window for implantation would have closed."

They were going to _let_ him test them? Don rolled over and sat up, ignoring the way the world swam around him. "I'm ready."

And the bed canted at a crazy angle as his vision blurred out altogether. He found himself lying back against the pillows despite his determination to get up.

"Not just yet," Chris said, a calm, casual reassurance in his voice. "You need to go back to sleep. Give it a couple of days."

He'd have fought if it he could - but that was what he'd been trying to do when his body had decided to lie down of its own accord. Chris was right. Besides, the chip was in his neck, right now. He felt for it again, and smiled at the responding buzz of power. He'd waited so very long for this. He couldn't wait to see what this new functionality could do.


	8. Chapter 8

"You have to be kidding me." Mark dropped the folder back onto his desk and gave Jason his full attention. Work would have to wait, no matter how much he had. "Not funny, Jason."

"Not supposed to be." Jason reached a long arm across the desk and flicked the 'do not disturb' switch, before pushing a pile of paperwork out of the way and sitting down on the edge of the desk. "Do you want to come see how a mended implant works or don't you?"

"You're serious? He's a Spectran collaborator! How much functionality have they given him?"

"All of it, as far as I know. Whether he can access any of it, that's the question. Chris says he can access enough to know it's there, at least."

Mark sighed, leaning back in his chair. If he'd been asked, he'd have made a huge fuss about this. Don Wade with a brand new, fully functional implant? He'd never have agreed to it. Of course, that was why he hadn't been asked.

"And you want me to do what?"

"You tell me." Jason shrugged. "Don's implant's been fixed pretty much the same way yours will be. If there's something you're worried about, come see if it's a problem for him. Or tell me now and I'll push the right buttons to test it."

All _the things I'm worried about_? Mark briefly contemplated Jason's reaction if he wrote a list and handed it over. Speed, strength, endurance, the ability to withstand jump, the link with the jump-drive, power for transmutation... he needed to get them _all_ back.

And the best proof that he could get them back would be that Don Wade already had. _Fabulous_.

He stood up and took the two shaky, unsupported steps - this week's wonderful achievement - over to his wheelchair. "I'll come watch."

.

Jason hurried ahead as Mark went over to sign into black section. "Gym two," he said over his shoulder. "I'll get Don."

Gym two had an observation area alongside; an entire wall of one-way glass looking down on the floor area. Mark briefly considered going in there, and decided against it. He'd see better close up; hear better, too. And Wade wasn't going to try to take out the Condor. If he did try anything, it would surely be 'take the cripple hostage'. He'd have a shock if he did. And they'd know exactly where his loyalties lay.

It didn't take long until the door opened again. Don glanced both ways, hesitating when he saw Mark, before stepping through. Jason followed him. Both were wearing loose workout clothes. Mark almost smiled at the body language. Jason was sharp and alert and very much in control, Don nervous as hell. He'd been concerned, Mark realised, that what he'd see would be two very old friends, with Jason oblivious to reality and trying to make up for his mistake of years earlier. If it had been a mistake at all. But Jason had been in command when Don had been captured, and he'd felt guilty about it ever since.

That wasn't happening. Jason's eyes met Mark in shared reassurance and understanding, before he turned to drop his towel on the bench at the side of the gym.

"Warm up," he said shortly to Don.

Don nodded, turned his back on both of them, and started on a set of very standard ISO-approved warmup exercises which looked as if he only half remembered them. He probably did. It was the best part of six years since he'd been on G-Force. Jason, meanwhile, did a couple of desultory stretches. He'd always been ridiculously flexible and found warmups unnecessary. It had saved the team on more than one occasion. Goons didn't expect that level of physical performance from someone who'd been tied up for hours.

Don only turned back after considerably longer than any active member of G-Force would have spent warming up. Considerably less time than Mark needed, these days. _It doesn't matter yet_ , he told himself, concentrating on watching the interaction between the other two. Don had fancied himself as a leader once, he'd been told. There wasn't any of that in his body language now. Nervous tension and absolute deference.

Mark had to remind himself that he was here strictly as observer, and watch as Jason reminded Don of basic martial arts moves and combinations which should surely have been ingrained beyond forgetting. Don had been a karate black belt even before coming to ISO. Watching him now, Mark realised for the first time that when the people who had known him before said he was 'damaged' they didn't just mean he'd had a rough time. He'd have said that nothing could wipe the degree of muscle memory you had to have to earn a black belt. Something had wiped it from Don Wade. The talent was there, a fair degree of fitness...but his moves weren't those of a high class, but rusty, martial artist. It was like watching an athlete from another sport trying martial arts for the first time.

Don knew it, too. There was frustration written all across his face as Jason called a halt, and he slammed his pads down on the bench with a degree of venom.

"That was crap. I'm sorry."

"We'll try something else." Jason left him to have a drink and a rest, and came over. "Any suggestions?" he asked more quietly.

"He didn't go near the implant there," Mark said.

"No. He'd probably have killed himself. No core stability."

Mark nodded slowly. Jason was right. The fitness he'd seen - it was in the big muscles. Superficial. Jason had been taking him through moves slowly, and that used the smaller, postural ones. Mark almost smiled as he caught himself tensing the muscles in question, up and down his spine. Don might have let them go while in captivity. Mark had been obsessive about doing the exercises he'd been set. _His_ core stability was fine.

He didn't realise that Don had turned back until he spoke. "Core stability, huh? You're probably right. So let's do it at a speed where the big muscles will compensate."

Jason shook his head. "You're not ready."

"What, to spar full speed? Afraid I'll show you up, Condor?"

Jason rolled his eyes and turned slowly to face him. "No, Don. Afraid you'll get hurt."

"I'll only get hurt if you're not capable of sparring with someone who isn't at your level. Shame. You used to be a darn good teacher. Princess -"

"You keep her out of this."

"Why? She'd probably spar with me. Why don't we ask her?"

"Like hell."

Don shrugged. "Your commander there needs to know if my implant works. If you won't test it out, they'll find someone who will. Tiny, maybe? I don't remember him being much of a martial artist, but maybe he's practiced."

"Fine. _Fine_." Jason put his hand in his pocket and tossed something at Don. "You want to do this? Let's do it properly. You can start by transmuting."

"I..."

"You never learn, do you? Push and I'll push back. I can push a whole lot better than you can."

Mark almost felt sorry for him. Don had wanted to spar. He was pretty sure birdstyle hadn't come into the equation. Now he stood there, frozen and desperate, and Mark waited for another collapse. It didn't come. Don fastened the bracelet round his left wrist with shaking fingers, brought his arm over, and said, "Transmute!"

Nothing happened. Unsurprising, really, after so many years out of practice, especially given the uncertainty in both action and voice - but the look of devastation on his face was more than Mark could stand by and watch. That was what he told himself, anyway. Nothing at all to do with Mark's own need to know whether a mended implant would work.

"He'll need a resonant field, Jason. Nothing's been tuned to him yet, surely."

"I guess you're right."

Jason strolled across the gym, stopping maybe four feet from the other. "You remember how this works?"

"I thought I remembered how to do it without help."

"Apart from the self-belief part, apparently. Follow me."

He didn't wait, didn't ask if Don was ready, just went into the slow armsweep required. This time Don's version was far smoother, almost a match, and for a moment Mark saw them learning this side by side, perfect mirroring. It hurt again, briefly. He'd learnt somewhere else, from a different teacher, and had never had quite the same form on the movement as his second.

"Transmute!" Two voices rang out as one, and Mark closed his eyes just in time to avoid getting blinded by the flare.

He opened them again to see two birdstyled figures, the second in a black and silver uniform he'd seen only in pictures. No G on the buckle, which was a nice touch by whichever technician had set it up. No weapons either, though the Hawk, second-in-command of an exploration team in training, had never carried any to start with.

 _Thank goodness for that jaunt on the space station_. Without it, he was pretty sure he'd have been losing it right about now. As it was, he had the burning envy under control, just about. Don's body language now said everything he'd felt up there, when he'd got birdstyle back temporarily after thinking it was gone forever. It was wonderful, a feeling of power and strength and control which he'd never appreciated fully until he'd lost it.

"So." Don's voice wavered. "What did you have in mind?"

Jason didn't answer, just stepped back and gave the formal bow for the start of a martial arts bout; back straight, hands by his sides. Even through the collar of his birdstyle Mark saw Don swallow, but he followed suit.

Jason started out with their standard speed drill. A basic series of punches, kicks and blocks, done in pairs, repeated faster and faster. Every ISO martial artist at black belt level would know it at deep muscle memory level. Getting it wrong had been one of the final straws which had made Mark admit to his problem.

And Don didn't get it wrong. At slow speed there was the same wobbly inaccuracy, but the moves were there. He didn't even try to correct the wobbles, just wound the speed up. If it had been anyone else on the other side, Mark would have called a halt there and then. But Jason could handle himself, and on the offchance that Don was about to get too big for his boots, having the Condor demonstrate casual superiority wasn't a bad thing at all.

The speed continued to increase. Somewhere in there Don had to have activated the implant. Had to. Nobody was that fast without it. And Mark's mind was made up. He'd planned to check a variety of things - whether Don had access to the jump-drive functionality was the biggest one. Now, watching him spar at a speed he couldn't possibly have managed unimplanted, his expression a mixture of delight and concentration, it didn't matter. Even if nothing but this one thing worked with a mended implant, he still wanted it.

"Enough!" Don gasped after a surprisingly long time. Mark hadn't expected him to last more than a couple of minutes. Pulling stamina from the implant too, maybe? Whatever it was, he was done now, doubled over and gasping the moment Jason retreated, scarcely breathing hard.

"It works physically," Jason said.

Mark nodded silently.

"Need to see anything else, or are you decided?"

"Decided?"

"Don't play coy with me. You've been wearing your 'tough decision' face ever since I came to fetch you. So, do you need more evidence, or do you want that implant fixed?"

"Jason!"

"Oh, I figured it out a while back," Don said in between deep breaths, hands on his knees. "Don't mind me."

Mark stared in horrified disbelief. Jason just rolled his eyes, utterly relaxed about it, and Mark considered it more detachedly. Don already knew who more than half of G-Force was anyway. He hadn't turned them in to Spectra yet. Of course, Don _liked_ Jason. He'd been entirely clear how he felt about the Eagle.

He'd been clear about it. Wouldn't a traitor have played best buddies?

Mark shook his head. Second-guessing himself was pointless. Don knew who he was. Not what he'd have chosen, but it was done.

"I'm decided," he said. "You'd best get Don's bracelet back. I'm going to ask Chris when he can operate."


	9. Chapter 9

Green-grey swirling mists, no idea which way was up, and a ghastly bitter taste in his mouth...

"Mark?"

He was vaguely aware that he'd groaned, but the world refused to stabilise.

"Easy there. You're still full of anaesthetic. You can go back to sleep."

 _No, I can't. Last time I did that and I woke up paralysed_. He fought for consciousness, to remember where his eye muscles were, and the world blurred into some sort of existence.

"Let him wake up."

That was Jason's voice. He wasn't sure why Jason would be there, but thinking wasn't really happening right now. Nor was focusing.

There was rattling to his right. "This will help," said the first voice, and there was movement, and hands on his right arm. He thought there was probably a needle in there already. He remembered it being inserted now, while they were prepping him for surgery.

Discomfort in his arm while something was injected, and the fog in his brain began to clear.

"Okay?" Chris asked.

He couldn't answer. He didn't know. He didn't even dare try to move in case he couldn't. And then something prodded him hard on the sole of his right foot and he jerked reflexively away from it.

"He's okay," Jason said.

Relief hit so hard he gasped, choked, and then simply dissolved into shaking hysterical sobs which he had no chance of controlling. He didn't even try. He had no idea how long it was until he opened his eyes and saw Jason sitting there. He rapidly shut them again, feeling himself flush scarlet.

"Sorry," Jason said unrepentantly.

"No, you're not." It came out considerably steadier than he'd expected. "Thanks. I -"

"Forget it. I plan to. _Now_ will you go back to sleep?"

.

Rather to Jason's surprise, that was exactly what Mark did. He was still full of drugs, of course, and shock and reaction had to be a big factor. Even so, Jason hadn't expected for the other to close his eyes and relax as if all was well with the world, his breathing settling and slowing into almost immediate sleep.

He could have left. If even Mark was relaxed and confident that all was well, then there was no reason for him to stay here. He still couldn't bring himself to leave Mark to wake up alone. No matter how crazy it was, that nagging voice in his head wouldn't go away. _You weren't there for him last time_ , it said, _and it all went wrong. Make it different_.

He couldn't guarantee it would be right. But when Mark woke up in the morning, he wouldn't be alone. And when Chris tested every muscle and nerve, as he'd have to do despite Jason's rough and ready test that things were working, Mark wouldn't be alone for that either.

Leaving people to do things on their own had never worked well for Jason. He wasn't crazy enough to think that Mark would have been fine before if only he'd stayed with him last time. He also wasn't about to jinx things this time. He'd slept sitting in a chair before. He could do it again, for as long as it took.

.

Four pairs of eyes swivelled to meet Jason's as he walked through the ready room door the following morning. Even Rick's.

"He's fine," he said without preamble.

Only Keyop's expression relaxed, so he expanded. "Everything works physically. He'll be on his feet – well, working towards being on his feet – just as soon as Chris lets him out of bed."

"How about the implant functions?" Tiny asked.

"No way to tell that until he tries for real. Not going to happen twelve hours after surgery." Mark's relaxed, confident manner made him believe that it would be fine, though. He'd already know if his enhanced hearing or vision wasn't working right. And, if his implant was finally working like everyone else's, he should be aware of it in a way he had never been before. Mark hadn't said anything. He'd just sat up in bed, doing everything Chris asked of him, looking completely at ease. Jason's best guess was that he was feeling the new buzz of power and a set of controls which would let him decide exactly when to use it, and was very, very happy about it.

And now, he'd sit around in bed for a day or so while the incision healed, and while Jason climbed the walls with the need to know if it had worked, and to what extent. He knew himself well enough to be sure that wasn't a good thing.

"I'm going over to ISO Racing," he said. "Call me if you hear anything more."

.

Ed was in bay three, head down in the engine of his car two, Dave and Sam on either side. He glanced up as Jason walked in, did a cartoon doubletake, and promptly cracked his head on the underside of the hood.

By the time the swearing had stopped, Sam had her arms round Jason and was in floods of tears, and Dave stood there, arms folded, shaking his head.

"All the pretty girls fall for you, hey, Jason?"

 _Yeah, and then they turn out to be Spectran operatives_. Sam wasn't, though. He was quite sure of that.

"Is everything all right now?" she asked, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

He nodded. "Everything's sorted out. I just need to wait for the rumours to die down a bit before I race again." A few weeks, Anderson had said. Two counted as a few, didn't it? And he'd already missed one weekend of races.

"Then you can start by playing engineer for a while." Ed rubbed the top of his bald head ruefully. He'd cracked it hard enough to draw blood. "Something's up with the fuel injection. I'd prefer a solution which doesn't involve dismantling the whole engine. Sam'll tell you how far we've got. Dave'll whine about how it cost him the race on Sunday."

Jason raised his eyebrows. "You were second? Not bad."

"Third. No acceleration off the last corner -"

"And both of you two make sure he eats something for lunch!" Ed raised his voice from the doorway. "Jason, you trying out for a supermodel or something? It's a car, not a horse. It doesn't care how much you weigh!"

Jason rolled his eyes as the door shut with a bang. "Busybody." Ed was right, though. He wasn't sure when he'd last eaten a meal. Even less sure when the one before that had been. Now that it was mentioned to him, he was more than a little hungry. Best do some work first, though.

"Not the pedal sticking, is it?"

"Checked that," said Sam. "Could be a linkage further along. Dave's convinced the whole system needs replacing."

"And Ed?"

"Says it's probably a valve."

"I'm with Ed."

Sam groaned. "I'd almost rather take the whole engine out. They're in such a stupid place."

Jason smiled to himself. How long had it been since he'd worried about something other than commanding G-Force? Now, for the first time in forever, it wasn't sitting like a lead weight at the back of his mind. Mark was going to be okay. He'd be back on his feet in a relatively short time. He'd be in birdstyle within days. The Eagle could worry about tactics and strategy and ISO's long term goals. Not to mention the mission reports and requisition paperwork, and buttering up idiot local commanders and civilian bigwigs. Jason had no time for people who had no idea what was involved in saving the planet and seemed to think it could be done without negative side-effects, spending money, or actually using bird missiles.

The Condor would get this car running properly again. At least, in an hour or so. His stomach grumbled audibly, and he pointed to the door. "After lunch. You heard Ed - I'm starving. Dave, you can tell me about this race you almost won. Maybe we can figure out how you can actually win next time."

Dave headed for the door, apparently walking on air. And Sam grabbed her jacket and, rather tentatively, came to walk alongside him. "I'm glad everything's okay," she said, apparently uncertain of how it would be taken.

 _Of course - I'm the Condor now. To both of them. And soon I'll be G-2 again_. Jason grinned, and put an arm round her shoulders. "Me too," he said, and meant it.


	10. Chapter 10

Mark felt faintly ridiculous walking to the simulator room which was permanently set up as the flight deck of the Phoenix. Birdstyle and a stick - what must he look like? But he had to start somewhere with his bid to make it back onto the team, and a simulation where he sat in the front right seat and gave orders was far and away the easiest option, physically. It was a whole week since his implant had been rebuilt. He'd proved he could transmute, and link to the jump-drive, and control the birdstyle wings. He'd pushed his fitness training as hard and far as he possibly could in a week. The obvious next stage was trying him out with the team again. Despite Chris Johnson's obvious complete disbelief that anyone was even considering it. He'd felt so very much better when Anderson and Ivanov had rounded on the doctor and told him to think again; that an Eagle with a working implant and body was very much under consideration for reactivation regardless of his current fitness level.

Even so, a full mission simulation had come up on his schedule far sooner than he'd anticipated. Sooner, he suspected, than the senior staff had initially planned. Jason had to be pushing the schedule. He only hoped that the Condor's plans weren't going to backfire. Anderson very much disliked being manipulated.

"The plan's for you not to have to get out of your seat until you're fully fit," Anderson had said. "But if you do need to, you can't rely on there being a shoulder around to lean on."

It made sense when put like that, and made him feel better about the stick. And, he told himself, it meant he was being taken seriously despite his current condition, and not that the doctor was right and nobody else had realised how physically weak he still was.

He was deliberately early for the simulator exercise. He'd wanted to be absolutely sure that the team was still in the daily physical training session. That would give him the chance to be in his seat when they arrived, to hide the stick away, and, most importantly, to refamiliarise himself with a set of controls he hadn't used in almost a year.

They'd set the chair up especially for him, he realised as soon as he sat down. Rick was the best part of six inches taller than he was, and he'd had some concern that not only would he not be able to remember the controls, he'd not even be able to reach them. He wasn't sure whether to be pleased or concerned that it wasn't going to be an issue. Jason might be treating his reinstatement as a done deal, with these tests purely to determine when it should happen, but Mark wasn't nearly so confident. He'd be entirely unsurprised if this turned out to be an unplayable scenario; a demonstration to all concerned that he simply wasn't up to the job. Mark himself could think of a dozen ways to do that, and if he'd been the one trying to disillusion the team, he'd have started out by making sure there was no obvious, basic reason why things had gone badly.

 _No point dwelling on it_ , he told himself. _You can't control the scenario. Just like you can't when it's for real. So quit fretting and make sure you can still fly the ship._

.

"Is this what you anticipated?" Anderson asked the older man sitting alongside him in the observation room.

Samuels nodded. "From what he's said to me, Mark's concerns are on a very practical level. Can he remember how the systems work? Will he make mistakes? What if he has to do something which is physically beyond him?"

"Valid concerns."

"Of course. But not terribly important. The team does not need his individual expertise - they can cope quite well with nobody in that chair at all. The question is how they will respond to someone different in command. Especially Jason."

"Jason's been vocal that he wants Mark back as G-1."

"That's no guarantee that his instincts will be to follow orders he may not agree with."

Anderson groaned. "Have they ever been?"

"That's my point."

Anderson leant back in his chair, alternately watching through the observation window and glancing down to the readouts on the supervisor's console he sat behind. Mark was apparently oblivious as he worked his way steadily through the basic Phoenix preflight checks for his console. He wasn't even attempting speed, Anderson noted. The arrogance which had occasionally brought him near to disaster in the past had certainly gone. But what about the brilliance, the lateral thinking, and the confidence? Had those simply stagnated along with Mark's physical abilities? Not for the first time, Anderson second-guessed the way he'd handled things. If only he'd been able to persuade Mark into a role in the control centre, instead of an administrator's office not even in black section. Careful precision and absolute adherence to protocol, from the man who they so desperately needed to be innovative and insightful, was painful to watch.

* * *

Mark had just finished the full preflight simulated checks when the door to the simulator flight deck opened.

"You're early," Tiny said cheerfully, heading to his own console. "Did they set it up right?"

Mark appreciated the casual tone, and tried to make his response match. "Yes. Lucky, really - I doubt I could see over the console from where Rick has it. What did you do with the others?"

"They're on their way. Jason was running through some move with Princess and Keyop. Fifty times too fast for me, so I thought I'd come see if you were here yet." He glanced at Mark's board, still showing the telltale green lights of a completed check. "Started without us?"

"Really not wanting to make a fool of myself right now."

"You won't." Tiny sat down in his own seat and ran his hands over the controls. "No mission information yet?"

"Nothing." He resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder at the one-way glass window overlooking the consoles. He was sure there were people up there already. Probably every senior officer in ISO black section. All here to see just how far the Eagle had fallen from where he had been. He contemplated running the checks again, and then decided that would be overkill. He wanted to appear prepared, not panicked. Instead, he sat back in his chair and made a determined effort to relax, one muscle at a time. He could do this. Just a training run. He'd done hundreds, if not thousands, of the things.

Five minutes later the door opened again and Jason came in, followed closely by Princess and Keyop. They'd barely taken their seats when the screen above Mark's console fizzed to life, and he had to resist the urge to stand up.

"Eagle, you are in command for the duration of this training session," Anderson said. "I recommend the use of codenames rather than numbers for clarity. Emergency launch; briefing to follow."

Mark's console lights were all still green. Do the checks again? He couldn't see why. And Anderson had ordered an emergency launch. In an emergency you didn't run checks twice.

"Sound off," he called.

They'd always done this with numbers, but it was just as clear with names...and using the names would hopefully save him from the embarrassment of referring to Jason as "G-2" when things got more hectic.

Their voices sounded out, in the old, familiar order, and Mark smiled and relaxed as Tiny did his job and ran the launch sequence which he could doubtless have done in his sleep. For about five seconds, until his console pinged at him and the mission data came through.

It was an old favourite. Find the mecha which is buzzing the cities and splat it. This time it was shaped like two cylinders side by side with another, smaller one at right angles to them rather than any attempt at the usual animal theme. Easier to program, he presumed. It made no real difference, since they couldn't hope to guess what animal Spectra would actually use. It was just a mecha to blow up. He'd done it hundreds of times in simulation and a few dozen for real. There didn't even seem to be any particular twist to this one. Mark glanced sideways at Tiny, but the pilot was still busy. And turning round and asking for comments from Jason, for something this basic? That wouldn't look good at all.

"Swallow, what's your best guess for the mecha's cruising altitude?" he asked.

"Sixty thousand," came back promptly.

"Owl, take us to sixty-one. Intercept course based on last known course and speed – the report allegedly came from a pilot, so shouldn't be too far wrong. Swallow, sensors to maximum, search for the profile, goodness knows it's weird enough. Swan, any radio traffic?"

 _It's coming back_ , he thought as Keyop acknowledged and Princess reported that no, there wasn't any obvious Spectran radio chatter going on which she'd somehow not thought was important enough to tell him about without being prompted. _I can do this_.

Then again, anyone could have done this. It was a basic scenario.

Except that in basic scenarios, you were supposed to be able to find the mecha. Mark had them try the standard search patterns first, widening as time went on. Higher and lower than the estimated altitude. Nothing. No other reported sightings, even when it would surely have had to be seen somewhere else by now.

"It's landed," he said. "Where could Spectra hide a mecha that size?"

"Couldn't have reached the ocean," Jason said. "Or any lakes big enough."

Keyop suddenly spluttered. "Shape. On the ground. Not animal. Like a building."

"Satellite images -" from Princess.

"On it," from Jason.

And a yelp from Keyop. "No need. Moving!"

"Pursue and -"

And the console pinged at him again. "New data available," Anderson's voice said over the speaker. "We believe some of the mecha crew have been based at a facility we've been trying to find for months, but the mecha isn't based there." Fake static replaced his voice.

"What the...? Swan, get that connection back!"

"We're being jammed."

"I'll just blow it up!"

Mark almost laughed. Some things never changed. "Jason - no! Prepare to run an infiltration - who do you want to take?"

 _There_ , he thought. _See, I can sit in my chair and send other people out to do the field work_.

His satisfaction lasted about three seconds. "Energy buildup on mecha," Keyop reported. "Going to self-destruct."

"How soon?"

"Too soon. I need to shoot the engines off it."

"No. We -"

"Mark, we've seen this before," Princess put in.

 _We've seen this before_. So that was the test. Had he done his homework? Did he know what Spectra was doing these days? Blatantly not. Mark sagged back in his chair.

"Proceed, Condor."

The missiles were in the air almost before the words had left his mouth. Two strikes, both at the back of the strange craft, near that upward vertical cylinder which on the ground, would have looked just like another tall industrial chimney. And the mecha began to fall out of the sky.

Mark said something extremely rude before he could stop himself. Talk about screwing things up. If they'd found it sooner, still on the ground, capturing personnel would have been a piece of cake. As it was, the wretched thing was going to blow up when it hit the ground -

"Swallow, prepare the tractor lines," Jason said behind him, and this time Mark did glance round. What the hell were tractor lines?

"Commander...?" Tiny asked, and Mark could do no more than shrug towards Jason's console.

"Stand by," Jason said, and Tiny's hands reached across the controls again. He obviously knew what was going on. Mark hadn't a clue.

"Hatches opening!" Keyop barked, and around him the team went into a frenzy of activity. The Phoenix dived towards the mecha and, as a collection of spherical escape pods burst from the doomed craft, suddenly lines snaked away from both wingtips of the Phoenix, forward and down. Those on the left met only thin air. On the right, they wrapped themselves round one of the escape pods.

"Yes!" That was Keyop, and while Mark wasn't watching, he was pretty sure the kid had punched the air in delight.

"Retracting," Jason said. "Owl, get us out of here."

And the screens went blank. Mark was just starting to turn when Anderson spoke again.

"Eyes forward, no communication, detransmute. Individual debriefs will take place immediately. Mark, you stay where you are. The rest of you, leave the simulator at ten second intervals, please. You first, Jason."

 _So we can't make up some story about how that was carefully planned all along. Like it wasn't completely obvious that I had no idea what was happening_. Mark had no desire whatsoever to communicate with anyone. He'd rarely been so embarrassed.


	11. Chapter 11

After a long minute punctuated by a series of retreating footsteps, Mark heard the side door close behind Tiny, and a few seconds after that the rear door opened. On the real Phoenix it led to the rest of the ship; in here it led to the observation room.

"With me, Commander," Anderson said.

Mark retrieved his stick from under the console and stood up carefully. The first five seconds, while his brain readjusted to something other than permanently sitting down, were always an exercise in balance. It was getting better, though. Three days ago it had been ten seconds, even with two sticks. Two days before that he'd still been using the wheelchair.

He walked across to Anderson as normally as he could, concentrating on every stride. "Where are we going?"

"Upstairs," Anderson said. "If you...?"

 _Another test? Is that why he wanted me out of birdstyle, because he knows it's been set up to give me as much physical support as possible?_ Mark mentally evaluated the staircase up to the observation room. Not too high, not too steep, and a good solid rail on the outside of the curve. "You go on ahead. I'll be with you in a minute."

Halfway up, he was forced to consider that maybe there was a reason stair climbing wasn't yet a part of his rehab exercises. Ten steps done and he was shaking and struggling. Not giving up, though. One hand on the rail, the other on his stick, leading alternate steps with alternate legs, he pushed himself upward one step at a time and forced himself to keep going when he reached the top. Anderson was over at the other side of the room, leaning over the consoles below the observation window, but he straightened up at the tap of Mark's stick on the wooden floor.

"Take a seat, Mark. How do you feel that went?"

Mark sagged into the nearest black leather chair, thankfully close to the top of the stairs. There wasn't anything he could say to explain his performance away. He didn't even try.

"Chief, I'm hopelessly out of date, both on Spectran tactics and our own capabilities. I should have taken that job in Control you kept trying to give me. My stupid mistake. Jason's doing just fine, and I'm the wrong man for the job."

Anderson's mouth twitched. "How about you let me do the analysis of what you should have done? What about what you did do?"

He shrugged. "Half the Academy seniors could have done it. It was that basic."

"And how would G-Force have reacted if I'd asked them to run a simulation commanded by an Academy senior?"

"They're pros. They'd have done their jobs."

Anderson sighed. "Let me show you something, Mark. I didn't drag you up here because I'm a complete sadist." He reached across the console and pressed a button, and a big screen over at the far end of the room slowly unrolled itself downwards. As the whine of the motor cut out, the ISO logo appeared and sharpened to full focus, with the black slash signifying top secret information across it, and the main lights dimmed.

"G-Force do not know that this information exists," Anderson said. "It stays in this room. These are the recordings from the stress monitors in the simulator's chairs. I've put up the last three runs, not including today."

The screen flickered and cleared to show fifteen basic line graphs, five rows of three, with the five current G-Force codenames down the side. Mark knew very little about such things, but he couldn't believe that being up in the top, red, section of the graph was a good thing. Jason's line spent much of the time flat against the top of the graph. Rick's wasn't much better, and even the other three had frequent spikes in the red and mostly oscillated within in the orange central section. The only line which ever dropped into the green significantly was Tiny's.

Mark didn't need to comment. He took them in, and then turned to Anderson, wondering what came next.

The image on the screen changed again. This time, just four graphs and a gap at the bottom.

"This is today's," Anderson said.

These graphs started off in the red, but rapidly dropped to oscillate between orange and green. Sure, there were some spikes, but there was no question that this showed a far happier team. At the end, every graph showed a steady green line.

"Wow," said Mark. "Are you sure the calibration's right?"

"We're sure. As you can see, everyone was tense initially - it's been nearly a year since you commanded them. There's a clear drop in stress levels as soon as the simulation started. Stress monitors don't lie. Like you said, they're pros. To outward appearances there's nothing different between this run and a thousand they've made with Rick. In terms of the strain they are under? There's no comparison. Jason in particular - look what happens every time you give an order."

The top graph certainly did contain a number of marked inverse spikes, dropping right down into the green.

"We've known we needed to make a change of commander for a while," Anderson said. "I'll be honest - you are very far from the first choice physically. But this...this overrides the physical issues. Provided you are prepared to take the risk, of course. It's your call."

Mark shook his head. "It's their call. I don't think they're going to want someone who has no idea that Spectra's massively reduced the time before they go to self-destruct, or even what the Phoenix's current capabilities are."

"If you'd overruled Jason, I'd agree entirely. The moment he let you know there was something you were missing, you stepped aside and let him handle it."

"But -"

"Mark, do you want me to recommend that you resume command or don't you?"

That was the sort of relaxed assumption of his capabilities which Mark had missed more than he'd believed possible, and he abruptly had to clear his throat. "Of course I do! But it has to be what the team wants too. We're talking about replacing the commander of G-Force with a cripple."

Anderson flinched visibly at the crude term, but his voice was calm. "You're getting less disabled by the day," he said. "Of course we'd prefer you to be fitter than you are now, but it's coming back. We can all see that."

Mark nodded slowly, still considering those graphs. Calm green lines told a story which was finally starting to untangle the self-doubt in his chest. Yes, they really were happier with him in the co-pilot's seat than Rick. Yes, Jason really would rather take orders than give them. The only thing missing from the picture was the fifth graph.

"Chief? Did you have me wired up too?"

"I wondered if you'd ask that." Anderson did something to the console, and the blank space at the bottom of the screen was filled. This graph oscillated a lot more wildly than the others, and spent a significant amount of time in the red - mostly at times when the others were in the green.

"You were a lot more worried about this run than anyone else was," Anderson said. "We hadn't expected anything else. Once it started, you settled. Giving orders didn't worry you. A bit of a blip when you considered sending Jason out on an infiltration, but it settled right back to green the moment you gave the order . And then a big spike and a high stress plateau towards the end. I take it you hadn't encountered tractor lines before?"

"Never heard of them," he admitted.

"There will be other things. Your team knows about them and will doubtless tell you when you should use them. Reacting the way you did then, letting Jason take over when he was the one with the expertise, is ideal. Now, shall we go join the group debrief?"

.

Going down the stairs was even worse than coming up. Mark fought his way down, one step at a time, leaning heavily on the implant for extra strength, and reminding himself that even a couple of days earlier he couldn't possibly have done this. He did his best to ignore Anderson, who had gone down the stairs two at a time and now stood waiting, watching his slow and painful process with an unreadable expression.

"Changed your mind?" was only thing he could think of to say when he finally reached the bottom, knees trembling and calf muscles on fire.

"Remembering that last week the rehabilitation specialists told us it would be a full month until you could manage a flight of stairs."

Not that they'd told him that, of course. Mark felt the knot of stress release a little more. Provided he could stay ahead of the rehab curve, things should work out. Should. The past year had taught him, painfully and repeatedly, that he should never, ever make assumptions.

.

Briefing room one was almost full. Mark's initial impression was of a sea of faces turning towards the door as it opened, and no spaces at the table at all. In fact, there were two. The seat at the far end of the huge oval table, Anderson's, was one. Nearer to the entrance was a space between Rick and Dylan, and Mark moved to that, murmuring "hi" as he sat down. He hadn't anticipated this. G-Force plus Anderson, Ivanov and Johnson, that was who he'd thought would be present. Instead, all the Force Two candidates were also here, as well as every senior decision-maker. Even Major Grant, though the man looked like death warmed over. And Samuels, the psychiatrist. Mark's newfound optimism shrivelled. Had Anderson given him his full support as a sop, knowing that the decision was going to go the other way?

Either side of the head of the table would normally have been G-Force's commander and second, but today it was Ivanov and Johnson, and then the other senior staff. The two teams filled the remaining seats. Rank order? G-Force was arranged that way, with Tiny next to Rick. If Force Two thought they were sitting in order, Mark suspected they might be in for a shock. Though it wouldn't have been the end of the world for him if that was how it went down. Commander of Force Two, with young North as his second? He could handle that.

"I'm aware this isn't exactly the debriefing some of you were anticipating," Anderson said as he reached his seat. "Nor is it the lecture others had been told to expect. This is a discussion on the future of our elite teams. We now have ten birdstyle operatives. That should equate to two active teams."

"Is Mark really ready?" Grant asked, and all eyes turned on him.

 _Crunch time_. Mark stood up as casually as he could manage, one hand on the arm of the chair, but absolutely not leaning on the table. "No, I'm not," he said calmly. "I can't fight, I can't run, and I doubt I can fly anything with foot controls. Not yet, though my fitness is improving by the day. But I can command whenever you want me to."

There was movement to his right. Jason, also on his feet. "I'm resigning, effective immediately, as commander of G-Force. That should make the decision about when a whole lot easier."

"Jason..." Princess's tone held sadness, but no real hint of protest.

"I'm a crap commander. I'm one hell of a good second, and I can lead any infiltration Mark orders just fine. We don't need a discussion. Put G-Force back the way it used to be, give Rick command of Force Two, and we're sorted."

Beside him, Rick choked. Jason sat back down as if nothing had happened, and Mark took his own seat again in lieu of anything better to do. He might have guessed Jason would have something dramatic in mind. That was stunningly blunt, though.

"Let me get this straight, Condor," Grant said, sarcasm dripping. "You're seriously suggesting we appoint a physically handicapped commander of G-Force, and the Academy prankster as commander of Force Two."

"You have a better idea? Let's hear it."

"I think we should hear Rick's comments first," Ivanov said.

Rick stood up, hands clenched in a way Mark suspected he hadn't realised was visible, and his face scarlet. It could have been embarrassment or anger, or just nerves. It was impossible to tell. The Kite blushed ridiculously easily. An occupational hazard of being blond, Rick had said once. He'd called it an inverse poker face.

"I offered my resignation to Jason some time ago. I'll be honest - we discussed command of Force Two then. I've been observing what he does ever since. I think I can handle it. At least enough to cope until I have some firsthand experience."

"The Academy prankster who has modelled himself on the Condor's command style." Grant sat back in his chair, wearing an expression of resigned disbelief. "Heaven help us all."

From the way his left hand was twitching, Mark wasn't at all sure Rick believed it himself either. Which made him a far better candidate for commander, in Mark's opinion. Overconfidence got you dead.

And then the hand tightened in decision, and Rick turned to him. "I could sure use some tips from the Eagle too. Get a second opinion on what the alternatives might have been sometimes, and why they weren't the best plan."

 _Because they didn't involve blowing something up, if I know Jason_. Mark just nodded. "I can do that. I'm going to need to go through a lot of mission tapes anyway. I'm a year out of date on Spectran tactics."

On his other side, Dylan cleared his throat. "Um...where do the rest of us stand? I mean, are you activating us as Force Two? Now?"

Anderson looked to his left and to his right, and the senior staff nodded in turn. Even Grant. All except one.

"You know I can't give Mark a medical combat clearance yet," said Chris Johnson. "I will not sign off on him flying missions until he's fit."

Anderson came as close to rolling his eyes as Mark thought he'd ever seen. "That's not the issue now. I'm asking about Force Two."

Chris nodded slowly. "I'm happy with Force Two."

"Thank you," Anderson said. "So, we have our second team. Kite, you will command and your designation will be G-6. The rest of you...well, we have discussed this extensively. Our basic rule has always been that the pilot of the main ship should not have to make command decisions at the same time. Raven, this means that your designation will be G-10."

Dylan's jaw clenched visibly, but he nodded in acceptance.

"Osprey, you have far and away the most experience of the remaining operatives. You will be the Kite's second in command."

"Thank you, sir," Dimitri said solemnly. "I will not let you down."

"Crane, you will be our G-8. You've observed a considerable number of missions from the controller's side of the desk. You heard your commander mention his lack of first hand experience. We expect you to make sure he doesn't repeat mistakes G-Force made before he joined them."

Paula took a steadying breath. "I'll do my best."

"That's all we can ask. Now, Kestrel..." His eyes fell on Jenny, who looked at the table. "You can guess what I'm going to say. You are desperately short on experience, your hand to hand combat isn't up to standard, your piloting is barely adequate, you are fourteen years old, you are short on fitness, speed and strength, and your physical potential is limited by the fact you are female. Unfortunately, apart from the Condor, you're the only jump-calculator we have."

"Sorry, sir." It came out almost as a whisper.

"You will be the limiting factor on your team going operational. We need you to be a reliable enough pilot to be left alone on the ship. We simply don't have the luxury of leaving the Raven behind."

"I understand." If anything, that was even quieter.

"You will be working extensively with the Raven and the Owl on the flight simulators. This cannot, of course, be at the expense of your other training. We need to see a significant improvement within two weeks."

This time, she nodded silently, and Mark felt a twinge of sympathy. He'd been through that sort of crash training course himself, shortly before G-Force had gone active. The kid was in for two weeks of exhausting hell. Probably followed by another two weeks just the same. The worst of it was that he could do with sitting in on some of it himself. He'd never been more than a barely adequate Phoenix pilot, but G-Force wasn't going to have the luxury of leaving the Owl behind either. He caught Jenny's eye as she glanced unhappily away from the head of the table and tried to look encouraging.

"That's the timescale we are working with. Condor, Kite, I'm not accepting either of your resignations right now. G-Force stays as it is while the Eagle gets up to speed. And, yes, Doctor, until you consider him sufficiently fit."

"I'm not -" Jason started.

Anderson was on his feet, leaning forward with both hands on the desk, as close to losing it as Mark had ever seen him. "We do not have time for your theatrics, Jason! Or for your politics and attempts to manipulate me. We expect a massive Spectran attack any day, quite possibly on several fronts. We have no idea where they will strike next. We simply cannot take a week off at this point to play teambuilding. You will stay active, as you are now, until Mark is ready to rejoin the team. Is that clear?"

Jason paused, sitting very straight, then nodded slowly. "Yes, Chief."

"Eagle, you are reassigned to black section as of now. Major Grant will speak to you after this meeting."

.

Grant's office was, as it had always been, immaculate. Clear, polished wood desk, not a coffee mug in sight, nor a loose piece of paper. The files on the shelf behind the desk were neatly labelled and alphabetised, and the books on the shelf above them appeared to be sorted in order of size. Even the cactus on the windowsill was perfectly symmetrical, standing in its own neat little gravel tray.

"So," Grant said as he sat down in the chair behind the desk - rather heavily, Mark thought - "we need to discuss more mundane matters. You have to give up the Team Seven job immediately. All your effort has to go into getting back up to speed here."

"I can do that," Mark said. "Nykinnen knows that this might happen. I just need to go tell him. My cover story -"

"Is that you have been assigned as special advisor to Team Eight."

"Eight?"

"The new remote control fighter squadron. We have a number of extremely good pilots who will never fly for real again due to combat injuries. We'd thought you might be one of them, if we could find a way to explain how someone who never went near a simulator in Team Seven had suddenly become a good pilot. As it is, they'll have to manage without you doing more than making a few comments about wheelchair accessibility. You won't have time. You need to start work in here this afternoon, and we'd prefer if you stayed close, given your...current lack of foot speed. I believe your old quarters are available, if you can manage the stairs."

"Now?"

"Is that a problem? I planned to assign a couple of my people to clear out your quarters and move everything up here this afternoon."

Mark nodded, after a brief moment of panic about whether he'd left anything unfortunate lying about. He didn't think so. He'd been a whole lot more careful since Jason had shown up on his doorstep out of the blue. Not that he exactly went in for embarrassing...but used underwear on the floor wasn't exactly the sort of cool, competent image he wanted to project.

"I need today, though," he said. "I won't drop Nykinnen in it, not after all this time. I need to tell him what's happened in person, and there are also a couple of things he needs to be aware of. Who Don Wade is, for one. And all the subtleties in young North's schedule. Give me a day to clear my desk, and tomorrow morning I'll be ready to watch film. Or whatever else you have in mind."

Grant drummed his fingers on the desk. "Let me see, Commander. When's the last time you flew a Phoenix simulator? No, scratch that. When's the last time you did whirlwind pyramid in gravity? As far as I'm concerned, that's the absolute minimum physical capability you have to have, and there's no way Dr Johnson will give you a medical clearance with anything less. We'll start tomorrow at ten in the simulator, since there's no point your even trying whirlwind pyramid just yet. Here are the keys to your quarters, and your transfer paperwork."


	12. Chapter 12

"Come in, Mark," Nykinnen said in reply to his knock. "Sit down - do you know how good it is to be able to say that to you again? What can I do for you?"

Mark swallowed. All this time wanting nothing more than to be rid of this job...and now it was over. He handed the forms over. "I'm sorry, Commander. Officially, I'm being transferred to Team Eight."

"Unofficially? Or, should that be 'more officially'?"

Mark glanced over his shoulder to check that the door was shut. He rubbed his forehead, suddenly disbelieving that this could be happening. "I'll be taking command of G-Force back sometime in the next few weeks."

Nykinnen's jaw dropped visibly. "That's great news! Only...is Jason okay?"

 _And this would be why I wanted to be here in person_. "No. No, he's not. Not hurt, but...command isn't for him. He's been having a rough time."

"Anything I can do to make it easier on the pair of you, you let me know." Nykinnen sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Can you bring Todd up to speed on what's in progress?"

"I'll do that next. But there are some things I have to bring you up to speed on first."

Nykinnen nodded slowly. "Fill me in. I take it this is black section stuff?"

"It is. You remember the application request from a chemist called Donald Wade? You need to know who he really is."

Nykinnen raised both eyebrows and put his coffee mug down to listen, and Mark told him the whole sorry story of the Hawk, G-Force's first mission, and, more than three years later, their eighty-fifth.

.

"Wow," was Todd's response to the news that Mark was leaving and why. "Commander, that's great. I don't suppose you know who'll be replacing you here?"

"No clue. Probably nobody just yet, because of the clearances involved. I'd see if I could get you some help from one of the other black section people, but to be honest I doubt any of them are going to have time to be in here for a while. You're going to have to go to Nykinnen if you're snowed under. On the bright side, if they're not in here, they don't need assignments."

"I can handle it." Todd waved at the desk, as always in complete order. "Though if you could sign a few things before you go...?"

It wasn't a big pile of things to sign, but Mark found himself dawdling over it. This little office had been part of his life for almost half a year now. It had, if he was honest with himself, saved him from self-destruction. He'd come in here and helped other people build their lives, even when he could do nothing about his own. It had given him purpose, authority, and a group of people who trusted the abilities he still had. And now he was going to have to start all over again in Team Eight, with minimal contact time and a bunch of people who had even less reason to take him seriously, because they were pilots and, as far as they knew, he wasn't and never had been.

"Oh, hell," he thought to himself, and only as Todd swung round from whatever he was doing at the filing cabinet did he realise he'd said it out loud.

"Commander? Everything okay?"

"Trying to figure out how the heck I make my cover story plausible at Team Eight without you and Nykinnen to cover for me. Especially when I'm barely going to have a spare hour over the next few weeks."

"Not my place to comment, Commander...but why do it now?" Todd closed the drawer and stood up, concern on his face. "I can cover for you here until you have time to maintain a cover operation somewhere else. Team Eight isn't up and running yet. I'll tell people you're getting ready to work there, Team Eight will think you're mostly working here, and everyone knows you still need to spend hours in rehab. Switch when life's a bit less hectic."

Mark groaned. "It's not that simple. Nykinnen needs someone doing my job. We both know you could do it, but ISO won't clear a corporal to be his exec. Not even a sergeant."

"I think we can cope for a couple of months." The door was opening, and Nykinnen stepped through and closed it behind him. "I came to ask if you had any recommendations for your successor, but Todd's right. Doing this now makes no sense. Unless you want out right away, of course."

Mark shifted in his chair. "I thought I did. Now..."

"We can do better. Let me tear up those forms. I'll second you to Team Eight as special advisor on disability rather than transferring you, we'll make sure they'll barely need you, and officially you can be mostly doing physical rehab. Not so very far from the truth, I suspect."

"If only." Mark leant back, feeling better. "I have a year of mission tapes to review. I have to get back on the flight simulators. Learning to walk without a stick is a luxury at the moment. Still...I'm going to take you up on staying here. Tear them up. I'll deal with Grant. I'm sorry to leave you both doing my job here...but I don't know who else you could have got in to do it anyway."

He glanced up at the clock, and flinched at how late it was. He needed to be back in black section. He hadn't talked to Jason yet. He hadn't flown a simulator of any kind in forever, and the only piloting he'd even thought about was when he'd put young North through his paces on the G-1 simulator a couple of weeks back. Not that either of them was going to need fast jet practice. Rick would be Force Two's jet pilot, and he suspected Tiny would be G-Force's. He was going to learn exactly what it felt like to be the one left behind on the ship. It was the only thing which made any sense.

"So get yourself back to black section and doing the things only you can do," Nykinnen said. "Major Grant's back in action? I'll talk to him about what we tell the Team Eight commander, if it isn't going to be the truth. And a word of advice, from someone who has absolutely never been where you are, but who has been thrown in at the deep end with a new command more than once. Don't burn yourself out. You can't review a year of missions in a day, or even a week. You're better off reviewing ten properly than glancing at a hundred. Unless you've developed Jason's photographic memory."

"I could so use that right about now." Mark sighed, standing up as smoothly as he could. "I appreciate this. I'll try to come -"

"You'll do nothing of the sort. I don't expect to see you here until you've caught up on everything you need to and there's been a smooth changeover. I mean it, Mark. For as long as there aren't enough hours in the day, we come last."

Mark grinned, and headed for the door. "Yes, Commander. I'll see you when I see you, then. There's no hurry to see Grant – I don't think he's even back on full duty yet."

As he closed the door behind him, he heard Nykinnen say, "And, while he's right that ISO wouldn't stand for a sergeant as executive officer of Team Seven, it's still past time you were promoted." The door clicked shut just too late to hide Todd's reaction, and Mark smiled to himself as he headed for the elevators to black section.

He was still glowing from his reacceptance as a full birdstyle operative at the front desk ("No need for that, Commander," he'd been told when he'd gone to sign in and collect a badge) and was heading for the internal elevators and his new-old quarters when Rick walked past, did a cartoon doubletake, and turned to match his slow pace.

"Mark, can I talk to you?"

"In private, I presume?"

"Yes...well, no. We - Force Two - could use your advice on something. Can you come to our ready room?"

 _Our_ ready room didn't sound like a major disaster and rejection of Rick as commander, at any rate. Mark said, "Lead on," and hoped Rick didn't go too fast. He had absolutely no idea where the Force Two ready room was.

Next door to the G-Force ready room, it turned out. Mark wasn't sure what had been in here before – he knew it hadn't been regularly used by people, he'd had noticed that. He thought it had been some sort of storage. It was square, rather than long and thin, but the basic elements were the same. Kitchen area, big comms screen, seating, bookshelves, table. View out towards the ocean, from two windows at the far side of the room. No ping-pong table, no drumkit.

"That was quick," said Dylan from over by the window. "Oh. Hello, Commander."

The other three turned to look - they'd been sitting side by side on the sofa with their backs to the door, and Rick cleared his throat in apparent embarrassment.

"I got cold feet. Or I thought we should get a second opinion. Take your pick."

His tone was relatively relaxed, though; the others were still smiling.

"Do I get an explanation?" Mark asked, moving to a chair.

"Sorry!" said Paula. "Sit! We, um, we're not happy with the designations we've been given. We don't think it's optimal. None of us."

For an instant Mark was taken back five years; in the room next door, with Jason ready to walk away completely. They'd sorted it then, themselves, and their solution had been far better than the proposed one. He couldn't begin to imagine not having had Jason as his second-in-command.

"Keep going," he said.

"I should be bottom of the pile," Jenny said, sitting forward, all serious and earnest. "In the only situation it would matter, me and Dylan the only ones left...it makes no sense for me to be telling him what to do."

"That's unlikely, though," Paula said, calm, professional reassurance in her tone. "What's more likely is that Dylan and I will end up paired doing infiltration or something at some point. It's only logical for him to be senior then. And him being the pilot isn't going to be an issue when we're not on the ship."

"Dylan?"

"Hell, I wanted command. I know it doesn't make sense, though. I'm a better big craft pilot than I am on jets, and Rick's the other way round. And he's got the experience." He grinned - forced, but it was there. "Maybe in four years it'll be me getting command of Force Three."

 _Lord, I hope not. Another four years of war? It'll be over by then - won't it?_ Mark just nodded, and moved on.

Dimitri jumped to his feet, proud and determined. "I feel that is as far as it should go. The second-in-command is going to have to make decisions while the ship is in combat. Also, a command team needs variety. Not two pilots. There are other aspects to be considered."

"'Mitri said it all," Rick said. "We've worked together before. I think we'll make a good team."

"So change it," Mark said. He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed Rick a pen. "You can write. Change it on the sheet."

"But Anderson -"

"You're going to have to face down a whole lot of people who are far scarier than Anderson if you want to command Force Two. And make tougher decisions than this. You want it changed, you change it. I'm not going to fight your battles for you."

"I don't expect you to." Rick deliberately pulled the sheet of paper towards him and began crossing out and writing. "You didn't laugh or tell us we were being idiots. That's enough confirmation for me. Just...do I have the authority to do this?"

"With your team behind you? Oh, yes."

He'd almost said too much, he realised. They were frowning, thinking it through, wondering how he could be so certain, and he wasn't prepared to explain.

"Was that it? If so, I recommend you go sort it right away."

"I will." Rick straightened up, paper in hand. He looked happier than Mark had seen him in a very long time. Command material? Well, if he wasn't, he was doing a darn good job of faking it. Force Two appeared to be viable. Now, could the return of the Eagle do the same for G-Force...?


	13. Chapter 13

"So, Doctor? Your status report on the Eagle, please?"

Chris knew full well what Ivanov meant. Time for him to eat humble pie, in front of every senior official in black section. There wasn't much else he could do, not given what everyone else had said about the things Mark had achieved in the past week. He'd known the man was dedicated. He hadn't expected the rate at which he'd been able to drive himself back towards being a functional member of G-Force. Maybe he should have done. Once the way was clear in front of him, Mark had always been unstoppable.

Well, Chris had never been happier to admit he'd misjudged someone. Ever.

"Mark's physical status is…" He couldn't keep himself from smiling. "It's about where I'd prayed it might be in six weeks or so. He's made extraordinary progress. Mike's suggestion of fast-tracking his recovery using old implant settings is working amazingly well."

"Not so well from where I'm sitting," Grant muttered, then raised his voice. "He's short on time to get back up to speed since you retuned him to sleep like a baby. We may need to reconsider priorities. He has to get back up to date on Spectran battle tactics. He has to know what the rest of ISO's capabilities are. He needs to start coming to the weekly intelligence meetings again, given the current satellite threat."

"I won't do anything to slow his physical recovery," Chris said as forcefully as he could without actively shouting. _I've betrayed his trust far too many times already, and this is where I draw the line in the sand_. He caught Anderson's eye, from where he sat at the head of the table. The security chief nodded, and Chris continued more quietly.

"At some point fairly soon, faking his implant out isn't going to help any more. It's persuading his system that it needs to get back to the musculature he used to have. It won't do a darn thing about the state that muscle is in. He will have to get fit by himself. At that point, he'll go back to needing a normal amount of sleep."

"We had a list of conditions which Mark had to achieve before we would reactivate him," Anderson said. "How close is he, Major?"

Grant made a show of riffling through the papers in front of him and pulling out what Chris assumed was the list in question, typed up and neatly laid out with bullet points. Most had neat pencil crosses next to them. "He's achieved everything we require except whirlwind pyramid. I believe that's scheduled for tomorrow at ten."

"So, if he performs satisfactorily in that?" Ivanov asked.

Chris held his hands up, wishing it wasn't always down to him to put a dampener on the situation. "No, not yet. We'd still need to retune his implant and optimize for jump. We can't do that while it's working with year-old physical settings. Look, I know it took me a while to believe it could happen, but now? Yes, we are getting the Eagle back. It won't be just yet, but I really will tell you when I think he's ready. And it won't be too long."

He leaned back in his chair, not bothering to look to see who was smirking. It felt good to be able to tell them that things were finally going right.


	14. Chapter 14

Mark awoke to a sensation of disorientation. The bed was wrong. The light from the window was in the wrong place. And yet...it was familiar.

He froze. He'd done this almost every morning for the past forever, it seemed. His self-image was G-1, the Eagle, commander of G-Force, the world at his feet. The months when the reality sweeping in as he woke up fully was 'not any more' had been beyond grim.

The past week had been good disorientation. He was back in his old quarters in black section, and right after the sinking feeling of no longer being in command came 'but soon I will be'. He could feel himself smiling, even before he'd opened his eyes. Even as he winced at the stiffness in his legs. The muscles were stiff because he was _using_ them. Yesterday, for the first time in months, he'd put on a gi and gone to train with Sensei Jones, who spent most of his time training the new implantees to apply implant speed and strength to their martial arts skills. It had been interesting. Without the implant he struggled to do more than walk, and a not very fast walk at that. But lean hard on it and he could perform even quite difficult moves, provided it was something quick. In and out, with an explosion of energy rather than a slow, controlled release. He'd enjoyed it. He'd probably done more than was advisable.

Moving at all, even just swinging his legs out to sit on the side of the bed, still hurt. He glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty. In two and a half hours, he'd be demonstrating his ability to do whirlwind pyramid with G-Force. Given his current physical abilities, it was time to start warming up. Slowly, smoothly, and extremely gently.

Since the surgery, he felt better every time he woke up. The implant was set to repair his muscles back to where they had been before everything had gone wrong. That meant fifteen hours of sleep a day. He didn't care. Having the implant actively help even when he wasn't exercising had been an advantage beyond his wildest dreams. He'd expected to be doing all the work himself. He'd tried not to think that he was about due some luck - recently, any such expectation had been the cue for a letdown of monumental proportions.

So he'd kept his disbelieving delight under control. He'd not pushed too hard physically - well, not until yesterday afternoon, anyway. He'd concentrated on the things which didn't put too much strain on his recovering leg muscles, splitting much of his time between various flight simulators. To his disappointment, he couldn't get anywhere near the G-1 yet - it had footbrakes. The Phoenix, though, was all hand controls. The only limit on his ability to fly it was his reflexes, tuned to things which didn't fly like a brick with an engine on the back. He'd always struggled with flying the big ship. Nothing had changed except necessity. It was difficult and annoying and he had to be able to do it because, for the first time, he was going to be the one left behind. He'd put in a substantial amount of effort and refused to allow himself to wish that it flew more like a fast jet, because it didn't. He thought he was probably flying it as well as he ever had.

The jump-console had been less urgent, since that was one job he wouldn't be getting back unless there was a disaster. Jason's records on the simulator were startlingly fast. He'd settled for a perfect success rate of safe, competent jumps. That was what was needed from a backup, and absolute proof that his interface with the implant was working properly every time.

Tape...well, he'd genuinely tried to watch it, despite how uneasy it made him to watch the unprofessionalism and sheer unhappiness on display in the Phoenix's cockpit. There were ten boxes in a pile in front of the screen on his desk right now. He'd gone to sleep in front of it at least three times, and hadn't made it through a single one of them yet. It was going to be a while before he was up to speed on current Spectran tactics.

And then there were the physical requirements. Whirlwind pyramid in gravity as a minimum, Grant had said. He rather thought it was the last outstanding requirement, assuming they weren't going to insist on him being able to fly the G-1. He was secretly and guiltily glad that passing a standard flight medical wasn't something they could reasonably ask for, not when Jason couldn't and never would be able to. He wasn't sure whether he would ever be able to, either. Migraines were on the standard veto list. Cerebonic implant failure wasn't.

He considered the stick, and then took it for the stairs even though he could manage without. He wasn't going to push his luck. His supply of energy was limited. He'd save it for whirlwind pyramid.

.

He hadn't expected Tiny to be in the big gym half an hour before the start of the session. Nor had he expected for its airspace to be half full. Whirlwind pyramid, they'd said. Instead, the massive space was clear to the ceiling for only about half its floor area. The rest had the bars out, criss-crossing from wall to wall right up to the roof four stories above.

"What's this?" he asked.

Tiny slipped down from the bar he'd been locking into place twelve feet from the ground. "We're talking whirlwind pyramid as an emergency escape option, right? Then no need to build it from the floor. We thought it would be easier for you to set up from a height."

"And Grant?"

"We're not doing whirlwind pyramid with Grant. We're doing it with you. If you don't agree, say so."

He met Tiny's eyes, glanced sideways to his broad shoulders. That was where he had to get up to, the best part of six feet off the ground. He was pretty sure that, no matter how hard he leant on the implant, he couldn't jump more than two. Leaping in from a height, though, as if he was coming down off the Phoenix's wing? That would require more complicated timing, more accuracy, less speed and strength. He nodded.

"We'll build it from above, because that's what I can do right now. Do you really think Grant will think it's good enough? I don't."

"If it comes to that, I can throw you up there." Tiny mimed cupped hands at knee height. "Won't be pretty, but it would work. So, you want twenty minutes practice time before Grant shows up?"

Mark nodded slowly, considering the bars. "Before anyone shows up. It's been a long time since I did this."

Tiny gestured to the bars. "Be my guest."

He crossed to the far corner of the gym, opened the bag he must have left there earlier, pulled out a sheaf of printed papers and started to read, leaning casually against the wall. Very well prepared, he was. Almost as if he'd figured out that Mark would be down here well before the start time and would prefer some practice which, to be honest, he really shouldn't be doing without someone to call Medical if he screwed it up horribly. Tiny really was a lot smarter than he looked.

Well, as long as it was only his team-mates who could predict his actions, that was probably okay. For now.

Tiny was ignoring him, and besides, this was functionality that he'd been able to practice over and over until it was back the way it should be because his physical fitness didn't affect it. Mark transmuted and began to consider the bars. He and Jason had raced to the top using arms only, transferring momentum with the minimum number of intermediate swings. He didn't need to put on that sort of display now. Conversely, swinging was a whole lot neater than climbing and didn't need leg strength.

The fast route they'd used once looked entirely suicidal to him now. Over nearer the door, though, the bars were closer together, with intermediate staggered ones so that he could swing sideways and gain height instead of having to go straight upwards. He picked his route carefully, chose a bar to start on which was barely eight feet off the floor, leaned on the implant and jumped for it. No problem. Swinging was easy. The long-unpracticed flick to let go and land on the next one up, less so. He nearly overshot, and wavered badly on his feet before snapping the wings out gave him the stability he needed.

 _Don't panic_ , he told himself. _If you fall, you just glide back down and start again_.

But he didn't want to fall and have to start again. He wanted to be able to do this. More than that, he wanted it to be fun again instead of some rehab exercise to be passed before he could move on. He'd never worried about falling before. He wasn't going to worry about it now.

Forget five feet to the nearest bar, slightly higher. Mark eyed one some fifteen feet away and lower, and simply let his instincts take over. A shallow, fast dive for it, let momentum carry him over the bar as he caught it, whip round building as much speed as he could, and fire straight up into the air. He knew where the bars were, muscle memory so deep nothing could destroy it.

Of course, his timing was shot to hell and he didn't have enough momentum to reach it and his muscles remembered being in far better shape than they currently were, but the direction was right, and there were plenty of other bars for him to catch and hang from, swinging gently while he eyed up his next landing point. Maybe not as straight up this time. See if he could keep the momentum going. In an emergency situation, that would be what mattered - not being a target, while the others dealt with the threat.

Next time he paused, almost at the ceiling, there were four sets of eyes watching him. _Don't hesitate_ , he told himself. _Just glide down. Catch the bottom bar. You can drop from there_. That was all the thinking he allowed himself. Wings out, best flight position he could manage, a shallow spiral so he didn't build up too much speed, and a single loop over the bottom bar leaving himself with a vertical drop of a little over a foot.

They'd practiced jumping and falling while out of birdstyle a few times. Not many - Anderson had always said that it was something you couldn't get better at once you knew how to do it, and all you could add was strain and wear on the joints. This felt like one of the higher drops they'd done then. Ten feet or so, leaving you with no choice but to let everything buckle. He'd have hit the ground ignominiously if a strong arm hadn't caught him from each side.

"Looking good," Jason said. "Think you can land it on a pyramid?"

He winced. "Probably not."

"I didn't think so. You get your feet in the right place. We'll worry about the rest."

 _This is just for emergencies. You are not practicing this for use in combat_. Mark stamped hard on the part of himself which wanted to run and hide, and waited for further instructions. He didn't get any. Around him, the four members of G-Force headed for the roof at combat speed. Emergency evac. They wouldn't have time to tell him what to do. He'd need to wait and be ready. That bar there looked like his best option. Fairly close, not too high, enough space to get his wings out and kill his momentum, assuming they formed up on the old worn spot on the floor. That was, of course, why it was worn. How many thousands of pyramid rotations had started out there? Countless.

He didn't worry about whatever it was G-Force was doing up in the roof, simply working his way quietly up to the bar ten feet from the floor, and swinging until he could stand on it, leaning against the wall with one hand on the bar above taking most of his weight. The four figures above him were a blur, performing some complex pattern he'd never learned. The setup for pyramid, though, was unmistakable. For a start, Jason and Tiny had to be on the floor.

He still nearly missed it. Both came down in a feet first full speed drop to an inch-perfect landing, and the moment Tiny glanced round Mark went for it. Good grief, but he was slow compared to them. Slow, and awkward. Princess had landed on Jason's shoulders and was stable before he'd even arrived from five feet away, wobbling on his foothold and giving Tiny a good kick in the helmet while he tried to find his balance. She had an iron, implant-enhanced grip on his shoulder, and belatedly he remembered that Keyop would be arriving any second. He twisted his arm round to lock hers into position, snapped the wings out, and held straight with everything he could as the Swallow landed, feather-light, on his shoulder and the whole thing began to spin.

It took everything he had not to buckle under the strain of gravity, rotation, and extra weight on his shoulders. Everything and then some, and then remembering that with this new implant he had to access it deliberately. He still forgot, sometimes. This new one was like reaching out and flicking a switch, and only then the strength was there for him to call on.

"Abort!" Jason snapped, and instinct took over. He went left, Princess would go right and Keyop straight up. The two on the base would slam to a halt in-situ as best they could, since they were still on the ground and going down wasn't an option. Keyop and Princess would flip neatly over and land perfectly. He'd do his best.

It wasn't bad. He did end up on his feet, wobbly and unsteady, and looked round in confusion.

"Problem? Why did you abort?"

Jason snorted, tossing his chin towards the bars. "You think I'm going to throw a pyramid up into that lot? Tiny, lose the metalwork."

 _No, but I thought we'd practice the setup more than once, and get airborne by just a couple of feet a few more times after that_. Mark shifted his weight, starting to feel the effects of what he was asking his body to do. Maybe Jason was being more realistic about this than he was.

Tiny went over to the control panel by the door and started pressing buttons, and the bars retracted smoothly into the walls, with just a faint whine of motors audible. And Jason turned his back ostentatiously on the observation windows - one-way glass, but they all knew just how many people would be up there watching - and spoke softly.

"We need to do this from ground level, or Grant won't buy it. Can you step up to knee level?"

Mark considered it for a whole half-second. "Not without a handhold."

"Tiny's shoulders good enough? If not, I can give you a boost. But then you'll be up there before Princess, with nothing to steady yourself on."

He permitted himself a smile. "I've been hauling myself round arms-only for months. That'll be fine."

Tiny was back alongside Jason, the bars were gone, Princess and Keyop were waiting, back far enough to get the runup and jump they'd need, and it was time to see if he really could do this. He couldn't make any attempt at a runup, and didn't try. He just stepped in front of Tiny, put his hands on the other's shoulders, and lifted his left, stronger, foot into Tiny's cupped hands.

"Go," said Tiny, and he put as much effort as he could into gaining height.

He hadn't anticipated hitting the wall, twenty feet away and ten feet from the floor. The silence was complete, and horrified...and, as he sat up, far more embarrassed than hurt, was broken by Jason's laughter.

"I thought you couldn't get six feet off the ground."

"I guess that implant's got more juice in it than I thought." He stood up carefully, one hand on the wall. "Let's try that again."

The next two attempts failed dismally, as he demonstrated that without leaning hard on the implant, no, he couldn't get six feet off the ground. The fourth time was almost right. He only overshot by a few inches, and managed to get his wings out just in time to break his fall. Even so, he sat down hard and inelegantly.

"Sorry," he said to Keyop, who was leaning casually against the wall. As the man on top, he wouldn't get to do anything until Mark got his act together and actually managed to complete the second row for him to stand on.

"No need. Take your time." He didn't sound annoyed or frustrated. More professionally reassuring. Even the Swallow had to grow up sometime, Mark supposed.

He returned to his starting point, mentally rehearsing what he needed to do. Height, but very little forward momentum. If he could get that right, it wouldn't matter if he went too high. He'd still land on the Owl's shoulders. If he got the twist wrong and ended up facing backwards, he could sort that out later.

"Ready?" asked Tiny, and Mark nodded, setting up again. This time...

This time it worked. This time he ended up on Tiny's shoulders, Princess's steadying grip tight enough to bruise, though he'd never have told her that. This time he locked everything out and stood straight and rigid as Keyop landed, knowing that posture was all-important at any speed at all.

This time, the pyramid spun, and picked up speed, and _rose_. And the balancing movements needed were easy, and natural. He could have stood in there forever. Except that they were practicing indoors, and while a full speed five-man doubtless could have gone through the roof, it wouldn't have made them popular with anyone.

"Break!" called Keyop, and Mark waited the required heartbeat after he felt the Swallow jump. It wasn't until he was circling down that he realised he'd instinctively taken up position at the head of the formation, first in the sequence of winged figures circling to the ground.

He landed, and managed not to fall flat this time. Jason landed a heartbeat after, followed by the rest of them, Tiny alongside him making up the circle.

"Um..." said Jason.

"I guess I shouldn't be landing in front, if this is supposed to be an emergency escape?" He kept it light.

"Third might be better," said Tiny, not looking anywhere near him.

"Most protected?" He saw them all flinch, and carried on anyway. "We should never need it. I'm not even trying to get ready for hand-to-hand yet, remember? I just spent five months in a wheelchair. I'm not embarrassed by being told when to step back." _Just by how easily I forget that I need to_.

"Try it again?" Jason asked. "Walk through getting you into third place in the circle on the ground first?"

"I think I can do it in the air." He'd be going up instead of down, following Princess round instead of heading in front of and below her.

"Then -" Jason stopped and swallowed a curse, bringing his bracelet up. Everyone else's was flashing the same coloured pattern. At least, except Mark's. Not part of the team. Not going to be contacted by a scramble. Not going anywhere.

Jason's arm fell to his side again, as the relaxation drained away and the shoulders tensed. And suddenly everyone was looking at Mark.

"I'm not active," he said simply, showing them the dead metal face on his wrist.

"Five seconds to fix," said Keyop.

"Activating my bracelet doesn't make me ready..." His voice trailed off, premonition singing down adrenaline-enhanced nerves. _You have to go. Jason's not going to cope. He'd decided he'd flown his last mission as G-1. He's let go. He's not thinking like a commander and he'll never be able to snap back into that mode. It's going to be a disaster._

 _But I still can't waltz in and take his command away._

"What's Rick's status?" he asked.

"Has a big red '2' on his belt as of yesterday," Tiny said.

"He's flown his last mission with G-Force," said Jason. "Better for all of us that way. You're coming, right?"

Mark looked around his team - _no, Jason's team_ , he reminded himself. No dissent. No objections. Nobody suggesting that they should take Rick instead. He looked for something to contradict it inside himself. He wasn't ready. He couldn't do whirlwind pyramid properly. He hadn't flown a single training flight in the Phoenix for real yet, and simulators were never quite the same. Logic said he should stay behind.

 _You have to go_ , his instinct insisted.

"I'll come to the briefing," he said.

.

He'd planned to sit somewhere neutral, half way down the table in a chair no team member ever used. It hadn't occurred to him that Jason would stride ahead the moment they entered the room and sit down emphatically in the seat always taken by the second-in-command, and that the rest of the team would align themselves accordingly and then look expectantly at him. With the speed he walked, he was barely to the end of the table by then. Anderson's expression was far from amused.

"It wasn't my idea, Chief," Mark said, pulling out the nearest chair.

Anderson sighed. "No, I don't suppose it was. Come and sit here, since Jason has so kindly left you a space. We have enough time for a discussion of this, provided it's quick."

"No need for a discussion," Jason said the moment he sat down. "He can do everything you asked. He's in command now."

"Everything?" Anderson's eyes were on him.

"What's the mission?" Mark asked. "If this is a raid on Spectra, then no, I'm not ready. If it's splat the incoming mecha here on Earth, I'm better than an empty seat. Do the briefing and I'll give you an honest answer."

 _This is the perfect easy first mission back_ , he thought as the report came up on the screen. Then, _no, don't get arrogant. Arrogance kills. They're all dangerous._ But it was indeed a basic splat the incoming mecha mission. It wasn't the major assault they were waiting for. It wouldn't matter that his implant wasn't jump-tuned yet. It shouldn't involve anyone leaving the Phoenix, let alone him. Just get up there and put a stop to the flying horror which was taking out oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

There wasn't much of a report. A few shaky videos of the initial three attacks. Some gun camera footage from ISO forces, who were doing their best at distraction. The thing was shaped like a giant crow which spat some sort of fiery plasma and left the rigs a mass of flaming twisted metal. Missiles didn't appear to be having much of an effect on it. Might be a fiery Phoenix job, or possibly just a question of getting Jason in range to pick a weak point and pull off one of his miracle shots. The footage wasn't clear enough to identify detail. That would be a decision to be made in the field.

He took a deep breath, refusing to let it shake. "Yeah, I can do that."

Anderson looked round the table. Four heads nodded, and he picked up the phone and dialled. "Anderson here. Add the Eagle's bracelet to the G-Force group. Immediately, please."

Ten seconds later, there was an entirely anticlimactic beep and brief flash of the faceplate of Mark's bracelet. And Anderson turned to him. "Eagle, you have a go. Take care."

"Yes, Chief." This time his voice did shake, and he jumped to his feet in an attempt to hide it. No need to transmute - they already were.

"Go," he said to Jason. "Get the preflights started. I'll catch up."

The rest of G-Force left the briefing room at a sprint. Mark followed them at the fastest walk he could comfortably manage. He'd be at least a couple of minutes behind them, and it wouldn't matter. Whether he or Tiny did the co-pilot's checks was entirely irrelevant.

He leant against the wall in the elevator as it descended, saving his energy, and making sure he was thinking clearly. Command of a mission, now, today, in five minutes. He'd not even considered it as a possibility this morning, and he needed to be sure he was up to speed. This wasn't a simulation. This was for real, and if he made mistakes people would die. Was he ready?

Yes, he decided, he really was. It felt right, as if he'd always done this, and the past ten months had been nothing more than a bad dream. His only regret was not having found time for that dinner with Princess. He'd be her commanding officer again now. It would be inappropriate.

But he was pretty sure that now she knew exactly how he felt. It would have to be enough. It was all he could give her.

"Report," he said as he walked onto the flight deck. As expected, Jason and Keyop were leaning back, boards full of green lights visible in front of them. Tiny was just getting out of the right hand seat and heading for his own. Princess was sitting forward, still working.

"They're evacuating the rigs," she said, half turning to face him. "So far the mecha's not attacked the lifeboats. They've decided not to use helicopters."

"Good. Keep monitoring." He headed for his console to find all the checks done. It was his own old seat, too, or one exactly like it, set up the way it always had been. That was reassuring. They might not have expected him to come back this early, but they'd already decided that this was his seat again.

Updates on his screen - a confirmation that all the installations in the area had been evacuated. That was one less thing to worry about. Civilian casualties due to so-called 'friendly fire' made him sick to his stomach. Always had done. Even when he'd had no choice, firing on their own people was the hardest thing he'd ever had to order. He'd have to be careful of the lifeboats, should they need to submerge, but knowing that he could fire missiles near a rig without worrying how many civilians were standing on it expecting to be saved rather than shot at was a huge relief.

And there was an extra message, surely not sent through any authorised channel. 'Good luck. Kite.' Rumour spread fast, apparently. It was decent of Rick to do that. The Kite should make a good commander, in time.

He glanced to his left. Tiny was near enough done. "Sound off," he said.

"G-2," Jason said casually from behind him.

That he couldn't let go. "No, Jase. Codenames. This hasn't been confirmed. Start throwing around new numbers and old numbers and someone's going to make a mistake. Probably me."

"Condor, then. But you're in command."

Princess added "Swan" before he could have considered responding. Keyop and Tiny continued equally quickly. They were ready, and they were waiting for him.

Mark stood up, just as he always had done, as the screen over his head fizzed to life. Anderson was in the controller's chair, and he felt himself smile. It was exactly as he'd dreamed it would be, almost every night for the past ten months. It was energy he could have saved, but it was worth it to be on his feet for this moment.

"G-Force ready for launch," he said.

Anderson nodded. "Latest data being transmitted now. Go do your job, Commander."

The giant sea doors began to inch open, water frothing in and up around the Phoenix. Mark sat down and fastened his straps tight, and relaxed back into his chair as the Phoenix's engines fired. Green lights across the boards. Green lights all through his soul. Green lights on the stress sensors in the chairs? He didn't know and didn't care. The moment they got back, he'd see to it they were removed. Nobody deserved to be spied on like that.

Doors fully open, water to the cavern ceiling. The Phoenix moved forward, building speed, accelerating towards the surface. It shot into the air and soared upwards. To his left, Tiny manipulated controls and brought them round in a long looping arc, heading for the Gulf of Mexico. Behind him, Princess was checking with air traffic control that their path was clear. Keyop was humming. Jason was silent, but implant-enhanced hearing told Mark his breathing was calm and relaxed. G-Force was back together again, and they were entirely happy about it.

There should have been a sunset. Instead, it was mid-morning, and they flew through dark, heavy clouds, the screens blurry with raindrops. It didn't matter. He had his life back.

* * *

And...that's it. Many thanks for the reviews and PMs, and just for reading. When you're writing in a fandom as quiet as this one, it means a lot just to see that little bar on the bar chart, day after day.

At least, that's almost it. This story has an epilogue, but it's so different from the story itself that I'll post it separately. You'll understand when you see it :)


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